TEAM  WORK  1  r 
THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


BY 


ARTHUR  W.  DUNN 


ill 


Special  Edition 
of  chapters  from  the  author’s 
forthcoming  book  on 
Community  Civics 

Prepared  for 

Army  Educational  Commission  —  Department 
of  Citizenship,  Bureau  of  Governmental 
Organization  and  Management 


D.  C.  HEATH  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 


BOSTON 


NEW  YORK 


CHICAGO 


TEAM  WORK 
THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


NOTE 


The  Department  of  Citizenship,  Army- 
Educational  Commission,  presents  in  its 
pamplets  the  points  of  view  of  eminent 
publicists  and  leaders  of  public  opinion  of 
various  groups  without  committing  the 
Army  Educational  Commission  to  any  par¬ 
ticular  views  on  subjects  of  possible  con¬ 
troversy.  Its  main  object  is  to  present 
fundamental  principles  and  stimulate  intel¬ 
ligent  study  of  the  problems  of  citizenship 
by  the  members  of  the  American  Expedi¬ 
tionary  Forces. 


11 


TEAM  WORK 
THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


BY 

ARTHUR  W.  DUNN 


Special  Edition 
of  chapters  from  the  author’s 
forthcoming  book  on 

Community  Civics 

Prepared  for 

Army  Educational  Commission  —  Department 
of  Citizenship,  Bureau  of  Governmental 
Organization  and  Management 


D.  C.  HEATH  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 

BOSTON  NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 


Citz.  No.  4.  5-10-19-25M 


Copyright,  1919, 

By  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. 


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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Our  Common  Purposes  in  Community  Life  ....  i 

II.  How  We  Depend  upon  One  Another  in  Commun¬ 
ity  Life .  7 

III.  The  Need  for  Cooperation . 15 

IV.  Why  We  Have  Government . 23 

V.  What  is  Citizenship? . 32 

VI.  What  is  Our  Community? . 35 

VII.  Our  National  Government . 40 

VIII.  The  Home . 58 

IX.  Why  the  Government  Helps  in  Home-making  .  .  66 

X.  Earning  a  Living . 73 


v 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign  Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/teamworkthroughgOOdunn 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH 
GOVERNMENT 


CHAPTER  I 

OUR  COMMON  PURPOSES  IN  COMMUNITY  LIFE 

The  most  important  element  of  success  in  community 
life,  as  in  a  ball  game,  a  family,  or  a  school,  is  team  work; 
and  team  work  depends,  first  of  all,  upon  a  common  purpose . 
Our  nation  gave  an  example  of  team  work  during  the  recent 
war  such  as  is  seldom  seen ;  and  this  was  because  every  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  nation  was  keenly  intent  on  winning.  We  see 
the  same  thing  in  our  school  when  a  Christmas  entertainment 
is  being  planned,  when  an  athletic  tournament  is  approach¬ 
ing,  or  when  some  other  school  activity  is  under  way  in  which 
all  are  deeply  interested.  It  is  often  illustrated  in  our  town, 
or  rural  neighborhood,  when  some  important  enterprise  is 
on  foot,  such  as  the  building  of  a  new  railroad  into  town,  a 
Red  Cross  “drive,”  a  county  fair,  or  the  construction  of  a 
much  needed  new  schoolhouse. 

All  communities  have  common  purposes,  although  they 
are  not  always  as  clearly  defined  as  when  our  nation  was  at 
war,  or  as  in  the  other  cases  mentioned  in  the  preceding 
paragraph.  Sometimes  the  people  of  a  community,  or  a 
large  portion  of  them,  seem  to  be  wholly  unconscious  that  a 
common  purpose  exists.  This  may  even  be  true  in  a  family 
or  in  a  school.  And  when  this  happens,  the  effect  is  the  same 
as  if  there  were  no  common  purpose.  No  club  or  athletic 
team  can  be  successful  unless  its  members  have  a  common 


2 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


purpose  and  understand  it .  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the 
communities  we  live  in.  In  so  far  as  our  communities  are 
imperfect  —  and  none  of  them  is  perfect  —  it  is  largely  be¬ 
cause  their  members  fail  to  recognize  or  understand  their 
common  purpose. 

People  in  communities  have  common  purposes  because 
they  have  the  same  wants.  This  may  not  at  first  seem  to  be 
true.  If  we  visit  a  large  city,  we  see  throngs  of  people 
hurrying  hither  and  thither,  jostling  one  another,  appar¬ 
ently  in  the  greatest  confusion.  We  wonder  where  they 
are  all  going,  what  they  are  doing,  what  they  are  seeking. 
In  rural  communities  or  in  small  towns  there  is  less  apparent 
confusion  than  in  the  bustling  life  of  the  city.  Yet  even 
here  it  is  not  always  easy  to  see  common  purposes  and  com¬ 
mon  interests.  From  morning  to  night,  from  one  week’s 
end  to  the  other,  we  engage  in  all  sorts  of  activities  to  satisfy 
wants  of  various  kinds.  Man  has  been  called  “a  bundle  of 
wants.”  Whether  in  large  or  small  communities,  we  are 
likely  to  be  impressed  by  the  variety  of  man’s  wants  and  even 
by  the  conflict  of  their  purposes. 

But  no  matter  how  numerous  and  conflicting  our  wants 
may  seem,  they  may  all  be  grouped  in  a  very  few  important 
kinds,  which  are  common  to  all  of  us  alike.  It  will  be  worth 
while  to  test  the  truth  of  this,  because  it  will  help  us  to  see 
our  community  life  in  some  kind  of  order,  and  will  throw  a 
flood  of  light  upon  the  common  purposes  that  control  it. 

For  example,  we  all  want  food,  drink,  and  sleep.  We 
want  clothing,  to  protect  our  bodies,  and  houses  to  shelter 
us.  But  all  these  things  supply  our  physical  wants;  that  is, 
they  relate  to  life  and  health.  Many  of  the  things  that  we 
do  every  day  are  important  because  of  their  relation  to  our 
physical  well-being.  One  reason  why  out-of-door  sports 
give  pleasure  is  that  they  make  our  blood  tingle  and  give  a 
sense  of  physical  pleasure.  Unless  our  physical  wants  are 


COMMON  PURPOSES  IN  COMMUNITY  LIFE 


3 


provided  for,  the  other  wants  of  life  cannot  well  be  satisfied. 
Good  health  is  a  priceless  possession. 

Another  reason  why  sports  and  games  give  pleasure  is 
because  of  the  association  they  afford  with  other  people. 
Association  with  others  is  a  second  great  want  which  explains 
many  of  the  things  we  do.  Whatever  may  be  our  other 
reasons  for  going  to  school,  it  affords  us  the  opportunity  to 
meet  and  work  and  play  with  other  boys  and  girls  to  our 
pleasure  and  profit.  One  of  the  objections  often  raised 
against  life  in  the  country  is  the  lack  of  opportunity  for 
association  with  other  people.  But  life  in  the.  country  is 
not  so  isolated  as  it  once  was;  and  one  may  be  very  much 
alone  in  a  city  crowd,  where  nearly  all  are  strangers  to  one 
another,  and  where  there  is  very  little  real  association 
among  individuals.  City  families  often  live  in  the  same 
apartment  house  without  knowing  or  having  anything  to 
do  with  one  another. 

While  going  to  school  enables  us  to  associate  with  others, 
the  principal  reason  for  going  is  to  gain  knowledge.  Whether 
we  always  like  our  studies  or  not,  we  certainly  want  knowl¬ 
edge,  and  seek  it  in  many  ways.  We  read  the  newspaper 
or  the  magazine  that  comes  to  the  home.  We  ask  questions 
of  parents  and  others  who  have  had  more  experience  than  we. 
We  may  travel  to  see  new  sights.  We  examine  with  curiosity 
a  new  machine  for  the  farm.  The  discoveries  and  inventions 
that  mark  man’s  progress  in  civilization  are  the  result  of  his 
eager  desire  for  knowledge. 

Besides  health  and  knowledge  and  association  with  other 
.people,  we  want  surroundings  that  are  pleasant  and  beautiful. 
The  want  for  beauty  is  sometimes  more  neglected  than  other 
wants,  but  it  is  important,  and  we  all  have  it  and  seek  to 
satisfy  it  in  some  way  or  other.  It  may  be  at  one  time  by  a 
walk  in  the  woods  or  fields,  or  at  other  times  by  cultivating 
flowers,  by  keeping  our  room  tidy,  by  looking  at  pictures,  or 


4 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


by  exercising  good  taste  in  clothing.  We  also  enjoy  beauty 
in  sound,  as  in  the  song  of  birds  or  music  in  the  home  or 
school. 

Very  likely  we  go  to  church  on  Sunday.  It  affords  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  enjoy  association  with  others,  to  add  to  our  knowl¬ 
edge,  and  to  hear  beautiful  music.  But  the  church  service 
is  one  of  the  chief  means  by  which  people  satisfy  another  of 
the  great  wants  of  life  —  the  religious  want.  Individuals 
differ  in  their  religious  ideas  and  in  the  depth  of  their  religious 
feeling,  but  in  every  community  there  are  certain  things  that 
men  do  because  of  it. 

When  going  to  school,  perhaps  after  hours,  or  on  Satur¬ 
days,  or  in  vacation  time,  we  have  worked  at  tasks  to  earn 
money,  or  at  least  have  helped  in  occupations  that  contribute 
to  the  “  living”  of  the  family.  Doubtless  we  have  thought 
more  or  less  about  what  we  are  going  to  do  for  a  living  after 
we  leave  school.  We  all  have  a  desire  to  own  things,  to  have 
property,  to  accumulate  wealth.  This  also  is  one  of  the  great 
wants  of  life.  We  have  perhaps  already  experienced  the  satis¬ 
faction  of  raising  our  own  first  crop  of  com  or  potatoes,  of 
acquiring  our  first  livestock,  of  putting  away  or  selling  our 
first  supply  of  canned  fmits  or  vegetables,  or  buying  a  set 
of  tools,  a  bicycle,  or  some  books,  or  starting  a  bank  account. 
But  after  all,  the  chief  reason  why  we  want  wealth,  or  to 
“make  money,”  is  because  of  what  we  can  do  with  it.  It 
enables  us  to  satisfy  our  wants.  Earning  a  living  simply 
means  earning  the  things  that  satisfy  our  wants  in  life. 

The  six  kinds  of  wants  that  we  have  indicated  clearly 
account  for  many  of  the  things  that  we  do.  In  fact,  all  of 
our  wants  are  of  one  or  other  of  these  kinds,  and  everything  we 
do  is  important  because  of  its  relation  to  them.  We  may  not 
be  ready,  yet,  to  accept  this  statement.  We  may  think  of 
desires  that  seem  at  first  not  to  fall  under  any  of  these  six 
kinds.  It  will  do  no  harm  to  add  other  kinds  to  the  list  if  we 


COMMON  PURPOSES  IN  COMMUNITY  LIFE 


S 


think  it  necessary.  But,  at  all  events,  the  six  kinds  of  wants 
mentioned  are  common  to  all  of  us.  We  live  in  communities 
in  order  to  provide  for  them,  and  a  community  is  good  to 
live  in  in  proportion  as  it  provides  for  all  of  them  adequately. 
It  is  these  wants  that  give  common  purpose  to  our  commu¬ 
nity  life. 

We  may  often  hear  our  common  purposes  as  communities 
or  as  a  nation  stated  in  different  terms  from  those  suggested 
in  the  paragraphs  above.  For  example,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Interior,  Franklin  K.  Lane,  said  during  the  war,  “Our  na¬ 
tional  purpose  is  to  transmute  days  of  dreary  work  into 
happier  lives  —  for  ourselves  first  and  for  all  others  in  their 
time.,,  Again,  President  Wilson  said  that  our  purpose  in 
entering  the  world  war  was  to  help  '‘make  the  world  safe  for 
democracy.’ ’  Although  these  two  statements  read  differ¬ 
ently,  they  mean  very  much  the  same  thing;  and  they  both 
refer  in  general  terms  to  the  things  this  chapter  discusses  in 
more  familiar  and  express  terms.  For  “happier  lives”  can 
only  result  from  a  more  complete  satisfaction  of  our  common 
wants.  Our  own  happiness  comes  from  the  satisfaction  of 
our  own  wants  and  from  helping  to  satisfy  the  wants  of  others . 
And  “democracy”  means,  in  part,  that  the  common  wants  of 
all  shall  be  properly  provided  for. 

In  the  Declaration  of  Independence  we  read: 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident;  that  all  men  are  created 
equal;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable 
rights;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 

The  statement  that  “all  men  are  created  equal”  has  troubled 
many  people  when  they  have  thought  of  the  obvious  in¬ 
equalities  that  exist  in  natural  ability  and  opportunity.  But 
whatever  inequalities  may  exist,  people  are  absolutely  equal 
in  their  right'  to  satisfy  the  wants  described  in  this  chapter. 
These  are  the  “unalienable  rights”  which  the  Declaration  of 


6 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


Independence  merely  sums  up  in  the  phrase  “life,  liberty,  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness.”  That  community  is  best  to  live 
in  that  most  nearly  provides  equal  opportunity  for  all  its 
citizens  to  enjoy  these  rights.  From  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  to  the  present  day  our  great  national  purpose 
has  been  to  increase  this  opportunity,  even  though  at  times 
we  have  apparently  not  been  conscious  of  it,  and  even  though 
we  have  fallen  short  of  its  fulfilment. 


CHAPTER  II 


HOW  WE  DEPEND  UPON  ONE  ANOTHER  IN 
COMMUNITY  LIFE 

Nothing  could  be  freer  than  air.  But  even  as  we  sit  in 
our  schoolroom,  whether  or  not  we  get  all  the  pure  air  we 
need  depends  upon  how  the  schoolhouse  was  built  for  ven¬ 
tilation,  the  number  of  people  who  occupy  the  room,  the 
care  that  is  taken  by  others  to  keep  the  room  free  from 
dust,  the  health  and  cleanliness  of  those  who  sit  in  the  room 
with  us.  If  this  dependence  upon  others  is  true  in  the  case 
of  the  very  air  we  breathe,  how  much  more  true  it  must 
be  of  other  necessaries  of  life  that  are  not  so  abundant. 

This  dependence  of  people  upon  one  another  for  the  satis¬ 
faction  of  their  wants  is  one  of  the  most  important  facts  about 
community  life.  It  is  what  makes  our  wants  “common 
wants.”  That  is,  it  is  not  merely  that  A  and  B  have  the 
same  wants,  but  that  A  is  dependent  upon  B,  and  B  upon  A, 
for  the  satisfaction  of  their  wants,  that  makes  their  wants 
common.  A  and  B  both  want  health.  They  both  know  this. 
But  it  is  only  when  A  feels  his  dependence  upon  B  for  his 
health,  and  B  feels  his  dependence  upon  A,  in  the  same  way, 
that  they  have  a  sense  of  a  common  want. 

The  farmer’s  life  is  often  spoken  of  as  an  independent 
life.  His  independence  was  certainly  much  more  complete  in 
pioneer  days  than  it  is  now.  In  regard  to  the  early  days  of 
Indiana  it  has  been  said : 

Give  the  pioneer  farmer  an  ax  and  an  auger,  or  in  place  of  the  last 
a  burning  iron,  and  he  could  make  almost  any  machine  that  he  was 
wont  to  work  with.  With  his  sharp  ax  he  could  not  only  cut  the  logs 
for  his  cabin  and  notch  them  down,  but  he  could  make  a  close-fitting 


8 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


door  and  supply  it  with  wooden  hinges  and  a  neat  latch.  From  the 
roots  of  an  oak  or  ash  he  could  fashion  his  hames  and  sled  runners;  he 
could  make  an  axle-tree  for  his  wagon,  a  rake,  a  flax  brake,  a  barrow,  a 
scythe-snath,  a  grain  cradle,  a  pitchfork,  a  loom,  a  reel,  a  washboard, 
a  stool,  a  chair,  a  table,  a  bedstead,  a  dresser,  and  a  cradle  in  which  to 
rock  the  baby.  If  he  was  more  than  ordinarily  clever  he  repaired  his 
own  cooperage,  and  adding  a  drawing  knife  to  his  kit  of  tools,  he  even 
went  so  far  as  to  make  his  own  casks,  tubs,  and  buckets.  He  made  and 
mended  his  own  shoes.1 

We  also  read  that  in  early  New  England 

Every  farmhouse  was  a  manufactory,  not  of  one  kind  of  goods,  but 
of  many.  All  day  long  in  the  chamber  or  attic  the  sound  of  the  spin¬ 
ning-wheel  and  loom  could  be  heard.  Carpets,  shawls,  bedspreads, 
table-covers,  towels,  and  cloth  for  garments  were  made  from  materials 
made  on  the  farm.  The  kitchen  of  the  house  was  a  baker’s  shop,  a  con¬ 
fectioner’s  establishment,  and  a  chemist’s  laboratory.  Every  kind  of  food 
for  immediate  use  was  prepared  there  daily;  and  on  special  occasions 
sausages,  head  cheese,  pickles,  apple  butter,  and  preserves  were  made. 
It  was  also  the  place  where  soap,  candles,  and  vinegar  were  manufac¬ 
tured.  Agricultural  implements  were  then  few  and  simple,  and  farmers 
made  as  many  of  them  as  they  could.  Every  farmhouse  was  a  creamery 
and  cheese  factory.  As  there  were  no  sewing  machines,  the  farmer’s 
wife  and  daughters  had  to  ply  the  hand  needle  most  of  the  time  when 
they  were  not  engaged  in  more  laborious  pursuits.  During  the  long 
evenings  they  generally  knit  socks  and  mittens  or  made  rag  carpets.2 

But  even  under  such  conditions  as  those  described,  the 
farmer  and  his  family  were  not  wholly  independent.  Even 
Robinson  Crusoe  on  his  lonely  island  was  dependent  upon  the 
tools  and  equipment  that  he  saved  from  shipwreck  and  that 
were  the  product  of  other  men’s  labor.  So,  also,  the  pioneer 
farmer  had  to  maintain  some  kind  of  relation,  however  in¬ 
frequent  and  slight,  with  the  outside  world.  Moreover,  he 
had  to  pay  for  his  comparative  independence  by  many  pri- 

1  Pioneer  Indianapolis,  by  Ida  Steams  Stickney  (Bobbs- Merrill  Co.). 

2  Nourse,  Agricultural  Economics ,  p.  64,  from  “  The  Farmer’s  Changed 
Conditions,”  by  Rodney  Welsh,  in  the  Forum ,  x,  689-92  (Feb.  1891). 


HOW  WE  DEPEND  UPON  ONE  ANOTHER 


9 


vations.  He  had  all  the  wants  described  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  but  he  had  to  provide  for  them  in  the  simplest  way 
possible,  and  often  they  were  hardly  provided  for  at  all. 

As  soon  as  a  number  of  people  come  to  live  together,  even 
in  a  pioneer  community,  it  is  likely  that  some  members  will 
have  a  knack  for  doing  certain  things  of  use  to  the  com¬ 
munity  better  than  others  can  do  them.  Thus  one  man 
may  be  especially  skillful  in  making  ax  handles.  In  time, 
the  entire  community  comes  to  depend  upon  him  for  its  ax 
handles.  In  addition,  he  probably  makes  other  tools  and 
does  repair  work  of  all  kinds.  This  requires  so  much  of  his 
time  that  he  does  little  or  no  farming,  and  depends  upon 
others  for  his  food  supply.  So,  in  the  course  of  time,  the  com¬ 
munity  has  its  blacksmiths,  carpenters,  shoemakers,  teachers, 
storekeepers,  doctors,  upon  whom  it  depends  for  their  special 
kinds  of  service,  while  each  of  them  depends  upon  others  to 
supply  the  wants  that  he  has  neither  the  time  nor  the  skill 
to  supply  for  himself.  Thus  interdependence  develops  in  the 
simplest  communities. 

The  farmer  still  does  many  things  on  the  farm  that  in  the 
city  would  be  done  by  special  workers,  such  as  repairing 
houses,  bams,  and  tools.  But  he  has  become  vastly  more 
dependent  upon  others  than  formerly.  This  is  due  partly 
to  the  great  improvement  in  farming  methods,  requiring  the 
use  of  complicated  machines  and  greater  technical  knowledge ; 
and  partly  to  improved  means  of  transportation  and  com¬ 
munication  which  bring  him  into  touch  with  trade  centers. 
If  a  farmer  needs  a  new  ax  handle,  he  can  get  a  better  one 
with  less  expenditure  of  time  and  effort  by  going  to  town  in 
his  automobile,  than  if  he  made  it  himself.  His  farm  ma¬ 
chinery  is  too  complicated  for  him  to  repair  except  in  small 
matters,  and  even  then  he  must  go  or  send  to  town  for  the 
necessary  parts,  which  may  be  sent  to  him  by  parcel  post. 
Not  only  does  he  get  better  tools  and  better  service  generally 


IO 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


through  this  reliance  upon  others  who  are  specialists  in  their 
lines,  but  he  also  on  account  of  it  has  more  time  to  give  to  the 
actual  business  of  farming,  and  leisure  for  thoughtful  study 
of  his  problem,  for  social  life,  and  for  recreation. 

It  must  be  acknowledged,  however,  that  reliance  upon 
others  may  be  carried  so  far  as  to  result  in  loss  or  disadvan¬ 
tage.  “ Self-reliance”  is  one  of  the  most  admirable  traits  of 
character.  The  pioneer  farmer  possessed  it  from  necessity 
to  a  remarkable  extent.  A  habit  of  depending  upon  others 
may  quickly  cause  a  person  to  lose  the  “knack”  of  doing 
things  for  himself,  to  become  less  4 4 handy  about  the  place,” 
and  less  4 "thrifty”  about  keeping  things  in  repair  or  installing 
small  improvements  —  the  casting  of  a  cement  trough, 
mending  the  harness  or  the  fence,  or  painting  the  bam. 

The  interdependence  of  people  in  community  life  to-day 
may  be  illustrated  by  starting  with  some  one  of  our  own 
needs.  For  example,  if  we  need  a  pair  of  shoes,  we  must 
buy  them.  In  order  to  do  this  we  must  have  money,  which 
we  will  suppose  that  we  earn  by  farming.  In  order  to  farm 
successfully  we  must  have  machinery.  This  we  also  buy 
in  town;  but  it  is  manufactured  for  us  in  distant  city  fac¬ 
tories  from  metals  procured  from  mines  and  from  wood  from 
the  forest.  The  shoes  bought  at  the  store  were  also  made  in 
a  factory  employing  hundreds  of  men  and  women,  perhaps 
in  Massachusetts.  They  were  made  from  leather  from  the 
hides  of  cattle  raised  in  the  far  West,  or  perhaps  even  in  the 
Argentine  Republic.  The  leather  is  tanned  by  another  in¬ 
dustry,  and  tanning  requires  the  use  of  an  acid  from  the 
bark  of  certain  trees  from  the  forest.  The  making  of  the 
shoes  also  requires  machinery  which  is  made  by  still  other 
machines,  the  necessary  metals  coming  from  mines.  To 
smelt  the  metals  and  to  run  the  factories  there  must  be  fuel 
from  other  mines.  Meanwhile  the  workers  in  all  the  in¬ 
dustries  involved  must  be  fed  and  clothed  and  housed. 


HOW  WE  DEPEND  UPON  ONE  ANOTHER  n 

This  means  the  work  of  farmers,  food  packers,  millers  and 
bakers,  carpenters,  cotton  and  woolen  mills,  clothing  fac¬ 
tories,  and  many  others.  At  every  stage  transportation 
enters  in,  transportation  by  team  and  automobile  truck, 
by  railway,  by  water.  These  are  only  a  part  of  the  activi¬ 
ties  necessary  in  order  that  we  may  have  a  pair  of  shoes. 
It  would  seem  that  practically  every  kind  of  worker  and 
industry  in  the  world  had  something  to  do  with  it.  People 
in  communities  to-day  are  indeed  very  interdependent. 

The  following  item  appeared  in  a  newspaper: 

HELD  BACK  BY  NEIGHBORS 
Farmer  is  Limited  by  Conditions  in  Community 

The  average  farmer  is  limited  in  the  changes  he  can  make  in  his  farm 
business  by  the  farm  practices  of  the  community  in  which  he  is  living. 

There  are  farmers  in  every  community  who  would  like  to  change  their 
systems  of  agriculture  but  are  restrained  from  doing  so  by  the  fact  that 
their  neighbors  will  not  change.  Many  farmers  have  tried  to  change 
from  one  type  of  farming  to  another  better  suited  to  the  region,  but 
failed  because  the  cost  of  running  such  an  entirely  independent  business 
was  too  great. 

A  man  owning  an  orchard  in  a  locality  where  there  are  no  other 
orchards  has  trouble  in  getting  rid  of  his  crop.  Even  when  the  farmer 
finds  buyers,  he  generally  receives  a  lower  price  for  the  same  grade  of 
fruit  than  would  be  received  in  a  general  apple-growing  region. 

If  a  man  wants  to  buy  several  pure-bred  Holstein  cows,  he  generally 
goes  to  a  locality  where  a  large  number  of  farmers  keep  that  kind  of 
stock.  Often  there  is  a  man  in  his  own  community  who  has  for  sale 
Holsteins  that  are  just  as  highly  bred  as  those  in  other  districts,  but 
he  either  has  no  market  for  them  or  must  sell  them  at  a  greatly  reduced 
price. 

The  farmer  ought  not  to  think  on  account  of  these  facts  that  he  should 
not  change  his  system  of  farming  just  because  his  neighbors  do  not  do 
likewise.  Probably  the  best  way  for  a  farmer  to  start  such  a  move¬ 
ment  is  to  arouse  the  interest  of  his  neighbors  in  his  farming  operations. 
As  soon  as  this  has  been  accomplished  he  can  gradually  bring  about  the 
change  that  he  advocates.  Farmers  in  a  community  profit  from  the 
experiences  of  other  individuals. 


12 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


The  value  of  a  man's  property  is  dependent  not  upon  his 
own  efforts  alone,  but  upon  what  his  neighbors  do.  The 
land  occupied  by  a  pioneer  increases  in  value  as  other  people 
settle  in  the  neighborhood,  and  because  they  settle  there. 
Men  often  buy  land  and  then  simply  wait  for  it  to  increase 
in  value  because  of  improvements  in  the  neighborhood. 
The  property  that  we  own  may  increase  or  decrease  in  value 
according  to  the  care  that  neighbors  take  of  their  property. 
Even  if  we  take  good  care  of  our  property,  it  will  be  less 
valuable  if  the  neighbors  let  their  fences  and  buildings  run 
down  and  the  weeds  grow,  than  it  will  be  if  they  keep  their 
fences  and  buildings  in  good  repair,  and  their  weeds  cut. 

Another  illustration  may  be  taken  from  the  field  of  health 
protection.  We  know  that  malaria  is  carried  from  one 
person  to  others  by  mosquitoes,  and  we  know  that  mos¬ 
quitoes  breed  in  standing  water,  as  in  swamps  and  in 
receptacles,  such  as  old  barrels  or  tin  cans,  that  hold  rain¬ 
water  until  it  becomes  stagnant.  Now  we  may  endeavor 
to  get  rid  of  mosquitoes,  and  thus  the  malaria,  by  removing 
all  open  receptacles  of  water  about  our  premises  and  by 
draining  the  marshes  on  our  land;  but  unless  our  neighbors 
do  the  same,  we  are  not  much  better  off  than  we  were  before. 

In  cities  and  towns,  and  sometimes  even  in  rural  com¬ 
munities,  merchants  deliver  goods  to  their  customers  by 
wagons  or  automobiles.  Customers  often  come  to  depend  so 
completely  upon  this  delivery  system  that  they  never  think 
of  carrying  anything  home  themselves.  They  telephone 
orders  to  the  grocer  several  times  a  day  and  expect  him  to 
deliver  even  very  small  packages.  In  such  cases  they  forget 
that  the  merchant  and  all  of  his  other  customers  are  de¬ 
pendent  upon  the  thoughtfulness  of  each  customer  for  prompt 
service  and  low  prices.  Every  unnecessary  trip  made  by 
the  delivery  wagon  delays  service  elsewhere  and  adds  to  the 
merchant's  expenses.  The  additional  expense  results  either 


HOW  WE  DEPEND  UPON  ONE  ANOTHER  13 

in  smaller  profits  for  the  merchant  or  in  higher  prices  for 
all  his  customers. 

We  do  not  always  realize  how  dependent  we  are  upon  one 
another  until  something  happens  to  disturb  our  accustomed 
relations.  We  best  realize  our  dependence  upon  the  tele¬ 
phone  when  it  is  out  of  order.  The  great  world  war  produced 
conditions  that  made  us  conscious  of  our  interdependence  in 
unexpected  ways.  For  example,  if  we  had  gone  into  a  store 
to  buy  underwear  in  the  early  part  of  the  war,  we  would 
have  found  that  the  price  had  greatly  increased,  and  we 
might  have  been  told,  if  the  salesman  were  well  informed, 
that  the  high  price  was  due  to  the  manufacture  of  airplanes ! 
The  explanation  is  that  the  wire  stays  used  in  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  airplanes  are  made  of  steel  wire  from  which 
machine  knitting  needles  are  also  made.  In  the  early  part 
of  the  war  all  of  the  available  wire  of  this  kind  was  taken 
for  airplanes,  thus  limiting  the  supply  of  knitting  needles 
and  consequently  of  knit  goods. 

The  manufacture  of  airplanes  is  also  said  to  have  affected 
the  price  of  fish!  The  nets  used  for  catching  certain  deep- 
sea  fish,  such  as  cod,  must  be  made  of  linen,  which  is  in¬ 
visible  in  water.  The  linen  which  had  been  used  for  this 
purpose  suddenly  came  into  great  demand  for  the  manu¬ 
facture  of  airplane  wings.  Since  airplanes  were  necessary, 
linen  fishing  nets  were  sacrificed  and  the  price  of  deep-sea 
fish  went  up.  This  of  course  increased  the  demand  for 
other  kinds  of  fish,  and  the  price  of  these  also  went  up. 

These  are  somewhat  unusual  cases  due  to  war  conditions; 
but  they  serve  to  illustrate  how  very  complex  our  com¬ 
munity  life  is  to-day,  and  how  we  may  be  affected  by  people 
and  events  far  removed  from  us. 

When  people  are  so  closely  dependent  upon  one  another, 
conflicts  are  likely  to  occur.  In  a  city  the  keeping  of  a  cow 
or  pig  by  one  citizen  may  be  an  annoyance  to  his  neighbors. 


14  TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 

If  one  family  fails  to  keep  its  premises  clean,  it  may  not  only 
be  unpleasant  to  the  neighbors,  but  it  may  even  endanger 
their  health  and  cause  their  property  to  become  less  valu¬ 
able.  Our  comfort  and  well-being  depend  upon  what  our 
neighbors  do,  just  as  their  comfort  and  well-being  depend 
upon  what  we  do;  and  if  either  of  us  acts  without  regard  to 
the  welfare  of  the  other,  there  is  a  conflict  of  interest,  even 
though  we  are  both  trying  to  satisfy  the  same  wants. 

Sometimes  conflicts  occur  in  community  life  because  of 
selfish  disregard  by  some  persons  of  the  rights  and  interests 
of  others,  as  when  a  man  takes  a  mean  advantage  of  another 
in  a  business  transaction.  More  often  they  are  due  simply 
to  failure  to  see  what  the  real  results  of  a  particular  act  may 
be  and  how  they  may  affect  other  people.  It  was  not 
dreamed  that  the  building  of  airplanes  would  affect  the  price 
of  underwear  and  fish,  and  it  was  only  after  careful  investi¬ 
gation  that  the  relation  between  these  things  was  discovered. 
A  family  that  is  careless  in  the  disposal  of  refuse  from  the 
household  and  stables  may  be  poisoning  the  wells  of  neigh¬ 
bors  half  a  mile  away,  and  still  be  wholly  unconscious  of  it. 
Sometimes  men  oppose  public  improvements,  such  as  better 
roads,  or  a  new  schoolhouse,  because  they  see  only  the  direct 
money  cost  of  the  improvements,  and  fail  to  see  more  im¬ 
portant  losses  to  themselves  and  to  the  community  that 
will  occur  if  the  improvements  are  not  made. 

One  thing  that  we  may  learn  from  such  facts  as  these  is 
the  danger  of  forming  hasty  judgments  about  things  that 
happen,  or  conditions  that  exist,  or  proposals  that  are  made, 
in  our  community  life.  Even  those  conditions  or  events 
that  are  apparently  most  simple  may  be  related  to  other 
conditions  and  events  that  are  not  at  first  apparent.  Wise 
judgment  and  wise  action  are  dependent  upon  the  most 
complete  knowledge  obtainable. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  NEED  FOR  COOPERATION 

When  people  have  common  purposes  and  are  dependent 
upon  one  another  in  providing  for  them,  there  must  be 
cooperation ,  which  is  another  name  for  “team  work.”  A 
team  of  horses  that  does  not  pull  together  cannot  haul  a 
heavy  load.  A  baseball  or  basketball  team,  though  composed 
of  good  players,  will  seldom  win  games  unless  its  team  work 
is  good.  A  few  soldiers  may  easily  disperse  a  large  mob, 
because  they  are  organized  and  trained  to  work  together  as 
one  man,  while  a  mob  is  unorganized  and  each  man  in  it 
acts  without  much  regard  for  the  others.  This  principle  of 
“pulling  together,”  “team  work,”  or  “cooperation,”  is  of 
the  greatest  importance  in  community  life.  In  fact,  there 
can  be  no  real  community  life  without  it. 

Perhaps  some  of  the  older  people  of  our  acquaintance  can 
tell  of  “barn  raisings”  in  the  early  days,  when  all  the  neigh¬ 
bors  came  together  to  help  one  of  their  number  to  “raise” 
his  bam.  All  the  men  of  a  pioneer  community  might  join 
forces  in  building  a  church,  or  a  schoolhouse,  for  community 
use.  This  represents  a  very  simple  kind  of  cooperation, 
which  may  also  be  seen  at  threshing  time,  when  the  farmers 
of  a  neighborhood  combine  to  thresh  the  grain  of  each,  the 
same  group  of  men  and  the  same  threshing  machine  doing 
the  work  for  all.  The  United  States  Department  of  Agri¬ 
culture  reports  that 

In  a  group  of  14  farmers  situated  in  a  community  in  one  of  the  best 
farming  regions  in  the  corn  belt,  .  .  .  one  year  it  was  found  that  5  men 
out  of  the  14  failed  to  get  all  their  corn  planted  by  the  last  week  in 


1 6  TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 

May.  They  had  worked  as  hard  and  as  steadily  at  that  operation  as 
had  their  neighbors,  but  they  were  delayed  by  one  cause  or  another, 
such  as  lack  of  labor  or  teams,  or  were  handling  a  larger  acreage  than 
their  equipment  would  allow  them  to  handle  satisfactorily.  In  this 
same  community  were  3  men  who  completed  all  their  planting  operations 
before  the  20th  of  May,  and  5  others  who  completed  their  work  by  the 
25th  of  May.  ...  If  all  these  men  had  considered  that  com  planting 
was  a  national  necessity  and  had  pooled  their  efforts,  all  of  the  com 
on  all  the  farms  could  have  been  planted  within  the  most  favorable 
time.1 

As  communities  grow,  and  the  people  become  more  de¬ 
pendent  upon  one  another,  and  especially  when  it  becomes 
hard  to  see  how  one  thing  that  happens  may  affect  others, 
as  shown  in  Chapter  II  (page  14),  cooperation  becomes  more 
difficult.  It  also  becomes  more  necessary.  It  needs  to  be 
organized,  and  it  needs  leadership.  The  experience  of  fruit 
growers  in  California  affords  a  good  illustration  of  organized 
cooperation.  When  they  acted  independently  of  one  another, 
they  often  had  difficulty  in  disposing  of  their  product  to  ad¬ 
vantage.  Sometimes  it  rotted  on  the  ground.  As  indi¬ 
viduals  they  did  not  have  the  means  of  learning  where  the 
best  markets  were.  They  had  to  make  their  own  terms 
separately  with  the  railroads  for  transportation  and,  since 
they  shipped  in  small  quantities,  they  paid  high  freight 
rates.  They  had  no  adequate  means  of  storing  fruit  while 
it  was  awaiting  shipment.  They  were  dependent  upon 
commission  merchants  in  the  cities  for  such  prices  as  they 
could  get,  which  were  often  practically  nothing  at  all. 

These  and  other  difficulties  that  made  fruit  growing  un¬ 
profitable  were  overcome  by  the  organization  of  fruit  growers’ 
associations.  Each  grower  becomes  a  member  by  pur¬ 
chasing  shares  of  stock.  The  members  elect  from  their 
number  a  board  of  directors ,  who  in  turn  appoint  a  business 

1  The  Farm  Labor  Problem ,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  Office 
of  the  Secretary,  Circular  No.  112,  p.  5. 


THE  NEED  FOR  COOPERATION 


17 


manager  who  gives  his  entire  attention  to  the  association's 
business.  The  association  has  central  offices  and  storage 
and  packing  houses. 

The  manager  keeps  in  close  touch  with  market  condi¬ 
tions,  by  telegraph  if  need  be,  —  where  the  demand  for 
fruit  is  greatest,  the  kinds  of  fruit  wanted,  the  best  prices 
paid.  He  contracts  for  the  sale  of  fruit  at  fair  prices.  Ship¬ 
ping  in  large  quantities,  he  gets  the  advantage  of  low  rates 
on  fast  freight  trains  with  refrigerator  cars.  Uniform 
methods  of  packing  fruit  are  adopted,  and  in  some  cases  all 
the  fruit  is  packed  for  shipment  at  the  central  packing  house. 
Information  is  distributed  among  the  members  as  to  the 
best  methods  of  growing  fruit,  the  best  varieties  to  grow,  and 
so  on.  On  the  other  hand,  supplies  and  provisions  are 
bought  in  large  quantities,  securing  the  best  quality  and 
the  lowest  prices. 

In  cities  there  are  almost  innumerable  organizations  by 
which  groups  of  people  cooperate  for  one  purpose  or  another. 
For  example,  men  in  the  same  line  of  business  or  in  the  same 
profession  organize  to  promote  their  common  interests. 
There  are  boards  of  trade,  chambers  of  commerce,  mer¬ 
chants'  and  manufacturers'  associations.  Lawyers  have 
their  bar  associations,  physicians  their  medical  associations. 
There  are  associations  of  teachers,  and  workmen  in  the 
various  trades  have  their  unions.  Besides  such  business 
and  professional  organizations,  there  are  clubs  and  asso¬ 
ciations  of  all  sorts  for  men,  for  women,  and  even  for  chil¬ 
dren,  some  of  them  educational,  some  social  or  recreational, 
some  philanthropic,  some  religions.  Where  there  are  so 
many  people  interested  in  the  same  thing,  as  in  cities,  and 
where  it  is  so  easy  for  them  to  meet  together,  it  is  quite 
the  usual  thing  for  them  to  organize  for  united  action. 

In  agricultural  communities  cooperation  has  developed 
more  slowly.  Farmers  have  been  too  isolated  from  one 


1 8  TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 

another  to  make  organization  easy,  they  have  not  fully 
realized  the  advantages  of  cooperation,  and  they  have 
lacked  leadership.  This  has  been  an  obstacle  to  the  fullest 
development  of  community  life.  The  most  backward  com¬ 
munities  are  those  where  there  is  the  least  cooperation.  In 
such  communities  “the  farmer  works  single  handed,  getting 
no  strength  from  joint  action  or  combined  effort.” 

But  all  this  is  changing.  Organizations  like  the  fruit 
growers'  associations  are  becoming  common  and  are  prov¬ 
ing  their  value.  These  include  cooperative  grain  ele¬ 
vators  and  warehouses,  creameries  and  cheese  factories, 
cooperative  stores,  fruit  and  grain  growers’  associations, 
live  stock  associations,  cotton  and  tobacco  associations,  and 
many  others. 

The  “farm  bureau”  is  a  good  example  of  organized  co¬ 
operation.  At  the  close  of  1916  there  were  nearly  three 
hundred  such  organizations  in  the  northern  and  western 
states  with  a  membership  of  nearly  100,000,  and  the  num¬ 
ber  was  rapidly  increasing.  A  farm  bureau  is  an  organiza¬ 
tion  to  secure  cooperation  throughout  an  entire  county  in 
behalf  of  all  agricultural  interests.  The  members  elect 
an  executive  committee  to  manage  the  affairs  of  the  bureau. 
In  each  of  the  small  communities  of  which  the  county  is 
made  up  there  is  a  “community  committee.”  The  chairmen 
of  the  several  community  committees  constitute  a  county 
agricultural  council.  The  chairmen  and  members  of  the 
various  committees  are  chosen  because  of  their  special 
interest  in  important  lines  of  work  and  their  fitness  to  direct 
such  work.  Various  other  organizations  in  the  county, 
such  as  the  fair  association,  breeders’  associations,  the 
Grange,  the  schools,  and  others,  are  represented  in  the  com¬ 
mittees  of  the  bureau,  the  purpose  being  to  secure  team 
work  among  these  various  organizations,  as  well  as  among 
the  different  communities  of  the  county  and  among  the 


THE  NEED  FOR  COOPERATION 


19 


individual  farmers.  The  bureau  also  cooperates  with  the 
state  and  national  governments  in  employing  a  county 
agricultural  agent ,  who  is  the  bureau’s  adviser  and  is  sup¬ 
ported  by  it  in  his  work.  In  short,  the  farm  bureau  repre¬ 
sents  the  county  working  together  in  an  organized  way  for 
the  improvement  of  community  life. 

In  the  Year  Book  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  for 
the  year  1915  the  story  is  told  of  Christian  County,  Ken¬ 
tucky.1  This  county  is  almost  wholly  agricultural,  but  the 
county  seat  is  a  small  city  of  10,000  population.  According 
to  the  story,  there  had  formerly  been  more  or  less  jealousy 
between  the  city  and  the  county,  as  not  infrequently  hap¬ 
pens.  But  a  business  men’s  association  was  organized  in 
the  city,  which  interested  itself  in  bettering  the  agricultural 
conditions  of  the  county,  because  the  business  of  the  city 
was  dependent  upon  the  neighboring  agriculture.  Among" 
the  things  started  by  this  business  men’s  association  was  a 
'‘crop  improvement  association,”  which  included  farmers 
in  its  membership.  A  county  agricultural  agent  was  em¬ 
ployed,  and  local  community  clubs  were  organized  in  dif¬ 
ferent  parts  of  the  county,  which  held  meetings  attended 
by  the  farmers  and  their  families.  Business  men  from  the 
city  often  took  part  in  these  meetings.  A  good  roads  asso¬ 
ciation  was  organized,  and  a  “good  roads  day”  was  held  on 
which 

business  men  turned  out  with  the  farmers,  stores  of  the  city  were  closed, 
and  on  one  of  the  principal  roads  at  least  90  per  cent  of  the  workmen 
were  city  men.  Stone  was  contributed  by  contractors,  concrete  firms 
furnished  men  gratis  to  repair  bridges,  one  company  supplied  outfits 
for  trimming  trees,  and  a  large  amount  of  work  was  done  by  the  county 
and  town  working  side  by  side.  .  .  .  Such  results  could  only  be.  ac¬ 
complished  through  unity  of  purpose  and  cooperation  of  all  the  people. 

1  “How  the  Whole  County  Demonstrated,"  1915  Year  Book ,  U.  S. 
Department  of  Agriculture,  pp.  225-248. 


20 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


Among  other  things  accomplished  in  this  county, 

A  fair  association  has  been  formed;  medical  instruction  has  been 
introduced  into  the  schools;  a  public  library  and  hospital  have  been 
built;  the  school  system  of  the  county  has  cooperated  in  all  educational 
work ;  both  town  and  country  merchants  have  offered  prizes  to  members 
of  the  boys’  clubs;  also  for  cooking  in  the  schools,  and  have  put  women’s 
rest  rooms  in  the  stores  for  the  use  of  the  public. 

There  is  now  an  active  girls’  canning  club  in  every  community  in  the 
county,  attended  by  the  girls  and  also  by  their  mothers.  There  are 
12  social  clubs  which  meet  regularly,  15  parent- teacher  s’  and  mothers’ 
clubs,  and  there  is  not  a  school  in  the  county  which  does  not  have  some 
form  of  community  meeting.  The  schoolhouses  are  generally  used  for 
the  meetings  of  the  community  clubs.  In  some  instances  farmers  have 
given  sufficient  ground  for  amusement  purposes  at  the  schoolhouses. 
Here  may  be  found  the  ball  diamond,  tennis  court,  and  basket-ball 
courts. 

It  is  said  of  this  county  that  it  “  stands  as  a  demonstration 
of  the  effect  of  education  and  organization  under  the  proper 
leadership.  The  town  and  the  county  are  one.  The  result 
is  better  agriculture,  better  business,  and  better  living.” 

Cooperation  is  as  necessary  for  the  fullest  satisfaction  of 
our  other  wants  as  it  is  in  the  business  of  making  a  living. 
For  example,  in  one  pioneer  community  there  were  few 
“books  and  papers  and  they  were  handed  about  from  house 
to  house.”  There  may  be  comparatively  few  people  in  a 
community  who  can  afford  to  buy  a  hundred  books  each 
year;  but  there  might  easily  be  a  hundred  persons  who 
could  buy  one  book  each,  and  by  some  arrangement  ex¬ 
change  with  one  another,  so  that  each  could  in  the  course 
of  a  year  have  the  use  of  a  hundred  books.  A  public  library 
provides  an  arrangement  by  which  a  great  variety  of  the 
very  best  reading  matter  can  be  enjoyed  by  the  entire 
community  at  trifling  cost  to  each  member.  In  fact,  we 
may  be  able  to  draw  books  from  such  a  library  without  any 
cost  to  ourselves;  but  it  is  well  to  remember  that  the  books 


THE  NEED  FOR  COOPERATION 


21 


which  we  thus  enjoy  do  cost  the  community  a  large  sum  of 
money,  and  that  our  free  enjoyment  of  them  is  one  of  the 
advantages  of  community  cooperation.  Our  part  in  the 
cooperation  is  in  using  the  books  carefully  and  in  return¬ 
ing  them  promptly,  so  that  as  many  people  as  possible  may 
have  the  use  of  them. 

The  necessity  for  cooperation  is  by  no  means  limited  to 
our  neighborhood  or  county  or  city.  People  with  the  same 
interests  organize  for  cooperation  on  a  state-wide  or  nation¬ 
wide  scale.  There  are  state  teachers'  associations  and  a 
National  Education  Association.  Labor  organizations  are 
national,  or  even  international,  in  their  extent.  There  are 
national  scientific  associations,  and  a  national  chamber  of 
commerce.  There  are  also  national  organizations  of  farmers, 
examples  of  which  are  the  National  Grange,  which  is  espe¬ 
cially  strong  in  the  northeastern  part  of  the  country;  the 
Farmers'  Educational  and  Cooperative  Union,  strong  in 
the  South  and  in  large  sections  of  the  West;  the  Farm 
Women’s  National  Congress;  the  American  Society  of 
Equity,  found  principally  in  the  Northwest;  the  National 
Council  of  Farmers'  Cooperative  Associations. 

One  thing  further  should  be  said.  Cooperation  is  largely  a 
matter  of  habit.  People  will  not  cooperate  unless  they  feci 
their  dependence  upon  one  another.  They  must  also  know 
how  to  organize  in  order  to  cooperate  effectively.  This 
requires  education  and  leadership.  But  more  important 
than  all  else  is  a  habit  of  cooperation.  Habits  can  be  formed 
only  by  practice;  and  opportunity  to  practice  cooperation 
is'abundant  if  we  are  only  on  the  lookout  for  it.  We  shall 
find  that  it  not  only  secures  better  results  in  whatever  we 
are  doing,  but  that  it  also  adds  greatly  to  the  enjoyment  of 
life.  Let  us  not  forget  that  cooperation  merely  means 
“team  work,"  working  together  for  the  common  good. 

“They  who  can  not  or  will  not  work  together  are  always 


22 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


in  a  weak  position  when  brought  into  competition  with 
those  who  can  and  do.”  1 

Farmers’  Organizations 

American  Cooperative  Association  (Cooperative  League  of  America). 
American  Dairy  Farmers’  Association. 

American  Federation  of  Organized  Farmers. 

American  National  Live  Stock  Association. 

American  Pomological  Society. 

American  Poultry  Association. 

American  Society  of  Equity. 

Corn  Belt  Meat  Producers’  Association. 

Dairy  Cattle  Congress. 

Farm  Women's  National  Congress. 

Farmers'  Educational  and  Cooperative  Union  of  America  (The  Farmers’ 
Union). 

Farmers'  Equity  Union. 

Farmers'  National  Congress. 

Farmers'  Society  of  Equity. 

Federation  of  Jewish  Farmers  of  America. 

Gleaners,  The  Ancient  Order  of. 

Grange ,  National  (Patrons  of  Husbandry). 

National  Agricultural  Organization  Society. 

National  Board  of  Farm  Organizations. 

National  Council  of  Farmers'  Cooperative  Associations. 

National  Dairy  Council. 

National  Dairy  Union. 

National  Farmers’  Associations. 

National  Farmers’  Cooperative  Grain  and  Live  Stock  Associations. 
National  Nut  Growers’  Association. 

National  Society  of  Record  Associations. 

National  Swine  Growers’  Association. 

National  Women’s  Farm  and  Garden  Association. 

National  Wool  Growers’  Association. 

Southern  Rice  Growers’  Association. 

1  Carver,  The  Organization  of  a  Rural  Community ,  page  5. 


CHAPTER  IV 


WHY  WE  HAVE  GOVERNMENT 

Government  is  a  means  by  which  to  secure  coopera¬ 
tion,  or  team  work.  A  few  illustrations  will  help  to  make 
this  clear. 

When  a  schoolhouse  is  built  to-day,  it  is  not  done  as  the 
pioneers  built  theirs;  yet  there  is  cooperation  of  a  highly 
organized  kind  in  the  production  and  assembling  of  the 
materials  and  in  the  construction  of  the  building  by  work¬ 
men  of  different  kinds.  Moreover,  since  the  schoolhouse 
is  a  public  building ,  the  community  cooperates  in  paying 
for  it.  This  is  done  by  means  of  taxes.  The  people  pay 
taxes  not  only  for  the  building  of  the  schoolhouse,  but  also 
to  meet  the  cost  of  operating  the  school,  as  in  paying  the 
teachers,  buying  equipment,  and  heating  the  building. 

The  community  must  know  how  much  money  is  needed 
for  the  school,  the  taxes  must  be  fairly  apportioned  and 
collected,  and  the  school  must  be  properly  managed  to  per¬ 
form  the  community’s  work  of  education.  In  small  com¬ 
munities  the  people  may  meet  together  to  provide  for  the 
taxes  and  to  decide  on  other  matters  relating  to  education, 
as  in  New  England  towns.  But  there  must  be  leadership, 
and  there  must  be  agencies  for  performing  the  work  which 
the  community  wants  done.  Every  community  therefore 
has  its  board  of  education,  or  school  committee  or  trustees, 
a  superintendent,  and  other  officials.  Such  organization 
corresponds  to  the  board  of  directors  and  business  manager 
of  the  fruit  growers’  association,  only  it  represents  the  entire 
community  and  attends  to  the  community’s  business  of 


24 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


education.  It  is  part  of  the  community’s  governing  ma¬ 
chinery. 

When  a  building  takes  fire  in  the  country  the  neighbors 
gather  as  quickly  as  possible  to  fight  the  flames  by  such 
means  as  may  be  at  hand,  but  seldom  very  effectively.  In 
a  small  city  or  town,  there  may  be  a  volunteer  fire  company 
composed  of  men  who,  when  a  fire  breaks  out,  leave  their 
usual  occupations  to  save  the  property.  They  may  be 
assisted  by  the  neighbors.  In  large  cities,  fully  equipped 
and  costly  fire  departments  are  maintained,  with  paid  fire¬ 
men  who  are  always  on  duty.  The  police  usually  keep  the 
crowd  away  from  the  burning  building,  not  only  for  their 
own  safety,  but  because  they  would  hinder  rather  than 
help  the  trained  and  organized  firemen.  In  each  of  these 
cases  we  see  cooperation  for  fire  protection ;  and  the  greater 
the  common  danger,  the  more  perfect  the  organization  and 
the  more  complete  the  control  by  government. 

It  was  once  the  usual  practice,  as  it  still  is  in  many  locali¬ 
ties,  for  each  farmer  to  give  a  certain  number  of  days  each 
year  to  work  on  the  roads.  Some  did  their  work  better  than 
others,  but  few  were  skilled  in  the  art  of  road  making.  Now, 
in  the  most  progressive  communities,  the  roads  are  better 
and  more  uniformly  built  and  kept  in  better  repair  because 
they  are  placed  by  the  community  in  charge  of  skilled  road- 
makers  paid  for  by  taxation.  But  whether  the  farmer  con¬ 
tributes  money  or  labor,  or  both,  cooperation  is  planned 
and  directed  by  the  government. 

In  Benjamin  Franklin’s  time,  each  householder  in  Phil¬ 
adelphia  swept  the  pavement  in  front  of  his  home  if  he 
wanted  it  kept  clean.  Franklin,  who  was  a  splendid  example 
of  good  citizenship  in  that  he  was  always  looking  for  oppor¬ 
tunities  to  improve  his  community,  tells  what  happened: 

One  day  I  found  a  poor  industrious  man,  who  was  willing  to  under¬ 
take  keeping  the  pavement  clean  by  sweeping  it  twice  a  week,  carrying 


WHY  WE  HAVE  GOVERNMENT 


25 


off  the  dirt  from  before  all  the  neighbors’  doors,  for  the  sum  of  six¬ 
pence  per  month  to  be  paid  by  each  house.  I  then  wrote  and  printed 
a  paper  setting  forth  the  advantages  to  the  neighborhood  that  might 
be  obtained  by  this  small  expense.  ...  I  sent  one  of  these  papers  to 
each  house,  and  in  a  day  or  two  went  around  to  see  who  would  subscribe 
to  an  agreement  to  pay  these  sixpences ;  it  was  unanimously  signed,  and 
for  a  time  well  executed.  This  raised  a  general  desire  to  have  all  the 
streets  paved,  and  made  the  people  more  willing  to  submit  to  a  tax  for 
that  purpose. 

This  is  a  good  illustration  of  community  cooperation  under 
simple  conditions.  A  hundred  years  later,  the  one  and  a 
half  million  people  living  in  Philadelphia  were  just  as  truly 
cooperating  to  keep  their  city  clean  by  means  of  more  than 
1200  miles  of  sewers  for  which  they  had  paid  nearly  thirty- 
five  million  dollars,  and  by  means  of  a  department  of  high¬ 
ways  and  street  cleaning  which  employed  a  contractor  to 
clean  the  streets  and  to  remove  all  ashes  and  garbage  at  an 
annual  cost  of  more  than  a  million  and  a  half  dollars.  This 
is  all  under  the  direction  of  the  city  government. 

What  is  true  of  our  local  boards  of  education,  road  super¬ 
visors,  fire  and  street-cleaning  departments,  and  other  de¬ 
partments  of  our  local  governments,  is  also  true  of  state  and 
national  governments.  For  example,  there  are  state  de¬ 
partments  of  education  and  a  United  States  bureau  of  edu¬ 
cation  to  secure  cooperation  in  educational  matters  in 
each  state  and  throughout  the  nation. 

A  number  of  boys  whose  lives  were  spent  mostly  in  the 
city  streets  were  once  asked  what  the  word  ‘‘government ” 
suggested  to  them.  Some  of  them  at  once  answered,  “The 
policeman !”  And  when  they  were  asked  “Why?”  they 
replied,  “He  arrests  people,”  “He  makes  us  keep  off  the 
grass  in  the  parks,”  “He  drives  us  off  when  we  play  ball  in 
vacant  lots.”  These  answers  represent  a  common  idea 
about  government,  as  something  that  stands  apart  from  us, 
or  above  us,  and  restricts  our  freedom.  Government  does 


26 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


restrict  the  freedom  of  individuals  at  times,  sometimes 

perhaps  unwisely,  or  even  unjustly;  but  one  of  the  best 

illustrations  of  its  real  purpose  is  the  traffic  policeman  in 
cities.  He  stands  at  the  crossing  of  busy  streets,  regulating 
the  movement  of  people  and  vehicles  in  such  a  way  as  to 
insure  the  safety  of  all  and  to  keep  the  intersecting  streams 
of  traffic  moving  smoothly  and  with  as  little  interruption 
as  possible.  Now  and  then  he  leaves  his  post  to  help  a 
child  or  an  aged  person  or  a  cripple  across  the  street;  or 

answers  the  inquiries  of  a  stranger.  If  now  and  then  he 

arrests  a  driver,  it  is  because  the  latter  is  disregardful  of 
the  equal  interests  of  others. 

In  small  or  thinly  settled  communities  there  may  be  no 
traffic  policeman ;  but  there  may  be  signs  at  the  intersection 
of  highways  to  guide  travelers,  or  warnings  such  as  “Danger¬ 
ous  Curve !”  or  “School:  Drive  Slowly!”  Such  signs  are 
usually  posted  by  state  or  local  authorities  in  accordance 
with  law .  And  even  where  there  are  no  signs,  the  laws 
themselves  are  supposed  to  regulate  traffic.  Some  one  has 
compared  the  laws  in  our  country  to  the  signals  given  to  a 
football  team  by  the  quarterback.  These  signals  are  agreed 
upon  in  advance  by  the  team,  and  when  they  are  given 
each  player  knows  not  only  what  he  himself,  but  also  what 
every  other  player,  is  to  do,  and  thus  team  work  is  secured. 
And  so  our  laws  are  said  to  be  “signals  of  cooperation,” 
just  as  much  as  the  sign  “Drive  Slowly,”  or  as  when  the 
traffic  policeman  holds  up  his  hand  or  blows  his  whistle. 

Laws,  however,  are  more  than  “signals  of  cooperation”; 
they  are  also  rules  by  which  cooperation  is  secured  —  “rules 
of  the  game.”  Wherever  people  are  dependent  upon  one 
another  and  work  together  there  must  be  rules  of  conduct. 
One  kind  of  rules  consists  of  what  we  call  “etiquette”  or 
“good  manners.”  We  have  doubtless  all  observed  how 
much  better  an  athletic  contest  moves  along,  or  even  the 


WHY  WE  HAVE  GOVERNMENT  27 

ordinary  sports  of  the  playground,  where  good  manners 
prevail.  The  best  sportsmen  are  almost  always  extremely 
courteous  to  their  opponents,  and  treat  them  with  every 
respect,  and  with  thoughtfulness  for  their  comfort  and  con¬ 
venience,  as  well  as  for  their  rights.  The  little  marks  of 
courtesy  and  good  manners  go  far  to  make  the  game  move 
smoothly.  “Good  manners”  include  more  than  the  “party 
manners”  that  we  put  on  and  take  off  on  special  occasions, 
like  “party  clothes.”  They  consist  of  the  accepted  rules  of 
behavior  toward  those  with  whom  we  associate.  In  the 
home,  in  school,  in  business,  in  public  places,  there  are 
“good  manners”  that  are  recognized  by  custom  and  that 
make  the  wheels  move  smoothly  and  without  jar.  We  do 
not  need  a  law  or  a  policeman  to  require  a  man  to  give  way 
to  a  woman,  or  even  to  another  man,  in  passing  through  a 
doorway;  good  manners  provide  for  this.  Even  on  the 
public  street  much  confusion  is  avoided  by  the  observance 
of  good  manners,  or  custom.  Polite  people  instinctively  turn 
to  the  right  in  passing  others  (in  England  and  Canada  the 
custom  is  to  turn  to  the  left)  without  thinking  whether  there 
is  a  law  on  the  subject  or  not. 

Now  most  of  our  laws  that  regulate  the  conduct  of  indi¬ 
viduals  are  simply  rules  that  experience  has  proved  to  be 
of  the  greatest  advantage  to  the  greatest  number,  and  that 
are  necessary  because  some  people  have  not  “good  manners.” 
Most  people  observe  them,  not  because  they  are  laws,  but 
because  they  are  reasonable  and  helpful  in  avoiding  friction 
and  in  securing  cooperation.  If  they  are  good  laws,  it  is 
only  the  “ill-mannered”  who  are  really  conscious  of  their 
existence.  Just  laws  restrict  the  freedom  only  of  the  “ill- 
mannered,”  while  they  give  freedom  to  those  who  have  “good 
manners.” 

The  following  story  illustrates  the  difference  between  law 
and  custom,  or  “manners,”  and  how  the  former  may  de- 


28 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


velop  out  of  the  latter.1  There  was  once  a  boys'  school 
located  in  an  8oo-acre  tract  of  land,  in  the  fields  and  woods 
of  which  the  boys,  when  free  from  their  studies,  gathered 
nuts,  trapped  small  animals,  and  otherwise  lived  much  like 
primitive  hunters. 

Just  after  midnight  one  morning  early  in  October,  when  the  first 
frosts  of  the  season  had  loosened  the  grasp  of  the  nuts  upon  the  limbs, 
parties  of  two  or  three  boys  might  be  seen  rushing  at  full  speed  over  the 
wet  fields.  When  the  swiftest  party  reached  a  walnut  tree,  one  of  the 
number  climbed  up  rapidly,  shook  off  half  a  bushel  of  nuts  and  scrambled 
down  again.  Then  off  the  boys  went  to  the  next  tree,  where  the  process 
was  repeated  unless  the  tree  was  occupied  by  other  boys  doing  likewise. 
Nut  hunters  coming  to  the  tree  after  the  first  party  had  been  there, 
and  wishing  to  shake  the  tree  some  more,  were  required  by  custom  to 
pile  up  all  the  nuts  that  lay  under  the  tree.  Until  this  was  done,  the 
unwritten  law  did  not  permit  their  shaking  any  more  nuts  on  the  ground. 

So  far  this  was  a  custom  accepted  by  the  boys  because  of 
its  reasonableness.  But  after  awhile,  some  members  of  this 
boy  community  planned  to  get  ahead  of  the  other  members. 
One  night  before  frost  came  they  secretly  went  to  the  woods 
and  took  possession  of  most  of  the  nut  trees  by  shaking  them 
according  to  custom.  When  this  was  discovered,  some  of 
the  leaders  of  the  community  called  a  meeting  of  all  the  boys. 
After  discussing  the  matter  thoroughly,  they  provided 
against  a  repetition  of  the  trick  by  making  a  rule  (passing  a 
law)  that  thereafter  the  harvesting  of  nuts  should  not  begin 
before  a  fixed  date  in  October. 

These  boys  acted  very  much  as  men  have  often  acted 
under  simple  conditions  of  community  life.  The  New 
England  '‘town  meeting,"  for  example,  is  precisely  the  same 

1  “Rudimentary  Society  among  Boys,”  by  John  Johnson,  in  Johns 
Hopkins  University  Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science ,  vol.  ii 
(1884).  The  story  as  here  given  is  reproduced  from  Community 
Leaflet  No.  15,  Feb.  1,  1918,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Education  (Lesson  C-18, 
“Cooperation  through  Law,”  by  Arthur  W.  Dunn). 


WHY  WE  HAVE  GOVERNMENT 


29 


thing  as  the  boys’  meeting.  In  large  communities,  such  as 
cities,  states,  and  the  nation,  such  popular  meetings  for  law¬ 
making  are  not  practicable;  therefore  the  people  elect  rep¬ 
resentatives  for  the  purpose. 

We  shall  study  the  organization  and  methods  of  law¬ 
making  in  later  chapters.  At  present  we  are  merely  noting 
why  we  have  laws,  and  the  fact  that  they  are  supposed  to 
be  made,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  the  people  themselves. 
And  right  here  we  see  the  second  thing  necessary  to  make  a 
democracy.  On  page  5  we  saw  that  in  a  democracy  all 
people  have  certain  equal  and  ‘‘unalienable”  rights,  and  that 
that  community  is  most  democratic  that  affords  its  mem¬ 
bers  most  nearly  equal  opportunity  to  enjoy  these  rights. 
Now  we  see  further  that  in  a  democracy  the  people  make 
their  own  laws.  Moreover,  the  laws  of  a  democracy  control 
not  only  the  conduct  of  the  people,  but  also  the  government 
itself.  The  government  of  a  democracy  may  do  only  those 
things,  and  use  only  those  methods,  for  which  the  people 
give  the  authority.  There  are  other  ways  than  by  laws  in 
which  the  people  retain  control  over  their  government;  but 
such  control  is  essential  in  a  democracy.  No  matter  how 
much  power  a  government  exercises,  it  is  only  when  it  ex¬ 
ercises  this  power  without  control  by  the  people  that  it 
becomes  autocratic. 

The  purpose  of  our  government  is  clearly  stated  in  two 
historic  documents.  One  of  these  is  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  which  has  already  been  quoted  in  Chapter  I. 
The  same  quotation  is  given  here  with  an  additional  sentence 
in  italics: 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident;  that  all  men  are  created 
equal;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable 
rights;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
That,  to  secure  these  rights ,  governments  are  instituted  among  men ,  deriving 
their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed.  .  .  . 


30 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


The  second  great  document  is  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  the  Preamble  to  which  reads: 

We,  the  people  of  the  United  States,  in  order  to  form  a  more  perfect 
union,  establish  justice,  insure  domestic  tranquility,  provide  for  the 
common  defense,  promote  the  general  welfare,  and  secure  the  blessings 
of  liberty  to  ourselves  and  our  posterity,  do  ordain  and  establish  this 
Constitution  for  the  United  States  of  America. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that  our  government 
and  our  laws  are  perfect.  They  can  not  be  perfect  as  long 
as  they  are  made  and  operated  by  imperfect  people.  It  is 
possible,  for  example,  that  the  boys  of  the  city  (page  25)  had 
a  just  complaint  against  the  government  for  not  permitting 
them  to  play  ball  in  vacant  lots,  unless  the  community  at  the 
same  time  provided  them  with  another  suitable  place  for  the 
game  — -  for  every  community  should  protect  the  right  of  its 
boys  and  girls  to  play.  We  are  far  from  having  attained 
complete  democracy.  Democracy  is  a  goal  toward  which 
men  are  struggling,  and  have  been  struggling  for  centuries 
—  since  long  before  our  Revolutionary  War,  and  in  other 
countries  as  well  as  in  our  own.  The  great  world  war, 
which  began  in  1914,  and  which  the  United  States  entered 
in  1917,  was  a  war  to  establish  more  firmly  in  the  world  the 
principles  of  democratic  government.  Whether  these  prin¬ 
ciples  shall  be  carried  out  in  practice,  and  whether  our  govern¬ 
ments  —  local,  state,  and  national  —  shall  fulfill  the  purposes 
so  clearly  stated  in  the  Preamble  to  the  Constitution,  de¬ 
pends  upon  the  extent  to  which  each  citizen  understands 
these  purposes,  and  cooperates  with  his  fellow-citizens  and 
with  his  governments  in  support  of  them 

It  is  said  that  in  one  of  the  training  camps  during  the  war 
an  officer  addressed  a  squad  of  new  recruits  as  follows: 

Boys,  I  want  you  to  get  the  right  idea  of  the  salute.  I  do  not  want 
you  to  think  that  you  are  being  compelled  to  salute  me  as  an  individual. 


WHY  WE  HAVE  GOVERNMENT 


3i 


No!  When  you  salute  me,  you  are  simply  rendering  respect  to  the 
power  I  represent ;  and  the  power  I  represent  is  you.  Now  let  me  explain. 
You  elect  the  President  of  the  United  States,  and  the  President  of  the 
United  States  grants  me  a  commission  to  represent  his  authority  in  this 
army.  His  only  authority  is  the  authority  that  you  vest  in  him  when 
you  elect  him  President.  Now,  when  you  salute  an  officer,  you  salute 
not  the  man,  but  the  representative  of  your  own  authority.  The  salute 
is  going  to  be  rigidly  enforced  in  this  army,  and  I  want  you  boys  to  get 
the  right  idea  of  it.  I  want  you  to  know  what  you  salute  and  why. 

It  is  very  important  that  we  should  “get  the  right  idea” 
of  what  our  government  is.  It  is  very  much  the  idea  that 
the  officer  gave  his  soldiers  about  the  salute.  It  is  the  idea 
contained  in  this  chapter:  that  government  is  our  own 
organization  by  which  we  try  to  secure  team  work  in  our 
community  life. 


CHAPTER  V 


WHAT  IS  CITIZENSHIP? 

Before  we  go  further,  let  us  get  a  definite  idea  of  what  it 
means  to  be  a  citizen. 

We  have  frequently  referred  to  the  fact  that  we  are 
“ members”  of  various  communities.  Our  bodies  have 
members,  such  as  hands  and  arms.  The  tongue  has  been 
called  an  “unruly”  member.  “It  is  a  little  member  and 
boasteth  great  things.”  1  There  are  two  important  facts 
about  members  of  the  body.  One  is  that  they  get  their  life 
from  the  body .  If  the  hand  is  cut  off,  it  quickly  ceases  to  be 
a  hand  because  it  is  severed  from  the  source  of  its  life.  If 
the  body  is  seriously  ill,  its  members  are  unable  to  perform 
their  proper  work. 

The  second  important  fact  is  that  the  body  is  dependent 
upon  its  members  for  its  life.  If  the  hand  is  cut  off,  or  an 
eye  put  out,  the  body  does  not  necessarily  die,  but  it  is 
seriously  handicapped.  If  a  member  is  paralyzed  or  dis¬ 
eased  it  may  be  a  positive  hindrance  to  the  body,  and  the 
disease  may  spread  to  other  members.  The  body  may  suffer 
merely  because  its  members  are  poorly  trained. 

Now  that  is  what  it  means  to  be  a  member  of  the  body; 
and  membership  in  a  family,  or  a  school,  or  a  club,  or  a  com¬ 
munity,  is  just  the  same.  The  apostle  Paul  wrote  to  the 
Church  at  Rome,  “We,  being  many,  are  one  body  in  Christ, 
and  every  one  members  one  of  another”  (Romans  xir.5). 
We  have  already  seen,  and  we  shall 'see  more  fully  as  we  go 
1  James  iii:  5. 


WHAT  IS  CITIZENSHIP? 


33 


on  with  our  study,  how  completely  we  are  dependent  upon 
our  communities  for  food,  for  the  protection  of  life,  for  edu¬ 
cation,  and  for  all  else  that  makes  up  our  life.  The  com¬ 
munity  that  does  not  provide  for  its  members  in  these  things 
is  like  a  sick  body. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  members  of  a  community  we  are 
always  contributing  something  to  its  life  —  either  to  its 
advantage  or  disadvantage.  Of  course,  each  of  us  is  only 
one  of  a  great  many  members  in  a  large  community;  and  we 
may  seem  to  be  very  unimportant.  But  each  performs  his 
part,  whether  it  be  great  or  small,  and  whether  he  does  it 
well  or  poorly.  There  are  many  members  of  communities 
who  are  like  the  diseased  or  paralyzed  hand,  or  like  the  hand 
that  is  untrained.  They  are  a  handicap  to  their  communi¬ 
ties  and  interfere  with  community  progress.  The  part  that 
a  member  plays  in  community  life  may  be  more  important 
than  he  realizes.  Even  in  small  things,  '‘the  falling  short 
of  one  may  mean  disaster  to  many.”  It  is  necessary  that 
each  member  of  a  community,  like  each  member  of  the  body, 
be  not  only  in  a  healthy  condition  but  also  well  trained. 

Now  we  often  speak  of  members  of  a  community  as 
citizens  of  that  community.  Citizenship  means  practically 
the  same  thing  as  membership  in  the  community.  As  a 
good  community  is  one  that  provides  well  for  its  members, 
so  the  good  citizen  is  the  member  who  does  well  his  part  in 
the  life  of  the  community.  A  bad  citizen  is  the  member 
who  hinders  the  progress  of  the  community  when  he  might 
be  helping.  A  citizen  has  certain  rights  and  certain  duties. 
His  rights  are  what  the  community  owes  him;  his  duties 
are  what  he  owes  the  community. 

Let  us  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  that  we  are  not 
yet  citizens  because  we  are  children.  The  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  says  that  “all  persons  bom  or  naturalized 
in  the  United  States  and  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  thereof  ” 


34 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


(that  is,  subject  to  its  laws)  "are  citizens  of  the  United  States 
and  of  the  state  wherein  they  reside.”  This  of  course  in¬ 
cludes  children.  Even  persons  bom  in  foreign  countries 
and  who  have  not  yet  been  naturalized  1  enjoy  almost  all 
the  rights  of  native-born  Americans,  and  therefore  have 
much  of  the  responsibility  of  citizenship.  Until  they  are 
naturalized  they  are  still  considered  as  members  of  the 
country  from  which  they  came,  and  therefore  as  owing  cer¬ 
tain  duties  to  that  country  which  would  be  inconsistent  with 
their  duties  as  members  of  our  nation.  Therefore  they  are 
denied  certain  political  rights,  such  as  voting  and  holding 
office.2  These  same  political  rights  are  denied  to  native- 
born  citizens  until  they  have  reached  maturity.  But  we 
must  not  confuse  this  right  to  vote  with  citizenship. 

1  “Naturalization"  is  the  legal  process  by  which  persons  of  foreign 
birth  renounce  their  allegiance  to  the  land  of  their  birth  and  pledge 
their  allegiance  to  our  government.  It  will  be  discussed  more  fully 
later. 

2  In  a  few  states  even  unnaturalized  persons  are  allowed  to  vote 
after  they  have  declared  their  intention  of  becoming  citizens. 


CHAPTER  VI 


WHAT  IS  OUR  COMMUNITY? 

In  the  preceding  chapters  we  have  often  spoken  of  “our 
community.”  In  fact  each  of  us  is  a  member  of  a  number 
of  communities.  It  is  time  to  consider  just  what  they  are. 

Every  community  of  course  consists  of  a  group  of  people 
who  occupy  a  more  or  less  definite  locality .  In  community 
life  much  depends  upon  the  character  of  both  the  people 
and  the  locality  they  occupy,  as  we  shall  see.  But  the  es¬ 
sential  thing  about  a  community  is  that  the  people  who 
comprise  it  are  working  together  (cooperating)  under  an  or¬ 
ganization  (government)  for  the  common  good  (common 
purposes). 

There  are  both  large  and  small  communities.  A  neigh¬ 
borhood  of  farmers  with  their  families  may  constitute  a 
community.  In  this  case  the  area  occupied  may  be  extensive 
while  the  people  are  few  in  number.  Or  the  community 
may  be  a  city  with  a  population  very  large  in  proportion  to 
the  area  it  occupies.  There  are  also  villages,  towns,  and 
small  cities  of  varying  sizes,  both  as  to  population  and  area. 
Each  state  in  our  Union  is  a  community,  and  so  is  the  nation 
itself,  because  each  is  composed  of  a  group  of  people  (very 
large  in  these  cases),  occupying  a  definite  territory  (also 
large),  and  having  a  government  through  which  the  people 
are  working  for  common  ends.  There  is  a  world  com¬ 
munity,  but  it  is,  as  yet,  very  imperfect.  The  nations  and 
peoples  that  comprise  it  have  been  slow  to  recognize  their 
common  purposes  and  have  so  far  failed  to  develop  adequate 
means  of  cooperation. 


36  TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 

A  community  of  farmers  has  interests  of  its  own,  largely 
centering  around  farming  activities  or  the  social  life  of  the 
local  neighborhood.  A  few  miles  away  is  a  village  or  city 
whose  people  also  have  their  own  peculiar  interests,  such  as 
the  lighting  of  the  streets  at  night,  or  the  building  of  a  new 
high  school,  or  the  election  of  a  mayor.  The  interests  of 
the  people  of  the  city  seem  in  a  large  measure  to  be  distinct 
from  those  of  the  farmers,  and  yet  there  are  interests 
common  to  both.  The  city  is  dependent  upon  the  country 
for  its  food  supply,  and  the  farmers  are  dependent  upon  the 
city  for  their  market.  Probably  some  of  the  farmers  send 
their  children  to  the  city  schools.  Thus  city  and  rural 
communities  are  bound  together  into  a  larger  community 
with  interests  common  to  both. 

In  the  early  days  of  western  settlement  a  community  was 
founded  in  Illinois.  It  was  an  agricultural  community,  but 
in  the  midst  of  it  a  village  grew  up,  which  in  the  course  of 
time  became  a  small  city.  One  of  the  first  settlers  was  a 
young  farmer  with  a  mechanical  turn  of  mind.  He  began 
experimenting  to  improve  the  methods  of  planting  grain. 
The  result  was  the  invention  of  a  combination  corn-planter 
and  cultivator,  the  manufacture  of  which  became  one  of 
the  chief  industries  of  the  growing  city,  employing  hundreds 
of  men  and  sending  machines  to  all  parts  of  the  world. 
Another  young  farmer  invented  a  better  plow  than  those 
which  had  been  in  use,  the  manufacture  of  which  became 
another  of  the  city’s  industries.  In  those  pioneer  days  each 
family  usually  made  its  own  brooms,  but  one  young  man  in 
this  community  earned  his  way  through  the  local  college  by 
making  brooms  from  com  raised  on  the  college  farm.  The  j 
college  corn  field  disappeared  in  the  course  of  time,  but  on 
one  part  of  it  there  grew  up  a  broom  factory  employing  a 
large  number  of  workmen.  These  city  industries  were  thus 
literally  “ children  of  the  soil,”  and  the  city’s  prosperity 


WHAT  IS  OUR  COMMUNITY? 


37 


depended  upon  the  agriculture  of  the  surrounding  region. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  city  provided  the  farmers  with  im¬ 
proved  plows  and  corn-planters,  furnished  them  an  imme¬ 
diate  market  for  their  products,  supplied  them  with  goods 
through  its  shops  and  stores,  and  gave  education  to  hundreds! 
of  farmers’  children  in  its  schools  and  college. 

A  strong  sense  of  local  interests  and  a  failure  to  see  the 
larger  interests  of  the  larger  community  sometimes  give 
rise  to  jealousies  and  antagonisms  between  small  neighbor¬ 
ing  communities,  and  especially  between  rural  and  city 
communities.  Such  misunderstandings  are  an  obstacle  to 
the  progress,  not  only  of  the  large  community,  but  of  each 
local  community.  It  may,  for  example,  be  proposed  to 
build  a  township  high  school.  It  is  natural  that  the  several 
communities  that  comprise  the  township  should  each  want 
it.  But  this  is  a  case  where  the  interest  of  the  entire  town¬ 
ship  should  be  considered  and  the  location  of  the  school 
determined  from  this  point  of  view,  and  not  to  the  advan¬ 
tage  of  one  local  district  as  against  other's.  It  often  happens 
that  the  people  of  a  city  are  exempted  from  taxation  for 
county  purposes  outside  of  the  city,  although  the  benefits 
would  be  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  great  for  the  city  as  for 
the  country.  This  sort  of  thing  serves  to  set  off  city  and 
country  against  each  other  instead  of  binding  them  together 
to  their  mutual  advantage.  The  case  of  Christian  County, 
Kentucky,  described  in  Chapter  III,  page  19,  is  an  excellent 
illustration  of  team  work  between  city  and  country  in  the 
interest  of  the  entire  county,  and  of  the  results  achieved 
by  it. 

Trade  and  education  are  two  of  the  chief  interests  that 
bind  people  into  communities.  But  where  these  interests 
exist,  there  are  likely  to  be  other  interests;  for  example, 
the  high  school  is  likely  to  be  a  meeting  place  for  social  and 
recreational  purposes. 


38 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


The  area  and  boundaries  of  a  “farming”  or  ‘‘rural  neigh¬ 
borhood”  community  are  usually  rather  indefinite  and 
changeable,  depending  upon  surface  features  and  upon 
transportation  conditions,  or  the  length  of  the  ‘‘day’s  haul.” 
With  improved  roads  and  better  means  of  transportation 
larger  areas  and  more  people  are  included.  A  “neighbor¬ 
hood”  or  “trade  area”  with  automobiles  is  much  larger  than 
one  that  uses  horses  or  ox  carts  exclusively.  The  consoli¬ 
dated  school  with  transportation  provided  for  pupils  expands 
the  rural  neighborhood  community. 

If  we  imagine  ourselves  members  of  the  family  that  lives 
in  a  farm  home,  we  shall  see  that  we  are  members  of  a 
certain  school  district,  of  a  certain  township,  of  a  commu¬ 
nity  that  has  grown  up  around  a  trade  center  and  a  high 
school,  and  of  course  of  the  county  as  a  whole.  No  matter 
in  what  school  district  we  live,  we  have  an  interest  in  some 
matters  in  common  with  the  people  of  all  other  school  dis¬ 
tricts  in  the  county.  For  example,  there  is  a  state  university 
at  Madison,  and  connected  with  it  is  a  training  school  for 
teachers.  The  work  done  at  the  university  has  an  influence 
upon  the  teaching  in  all  the  schools  of  the  county,  and 
indeed  of  the  whole  state.  There  is  also  an  agricultural 
college  at  the  state  university  which  serves  the  farmers 
throughout  the  entire  county  and  state. 

Just  as  the  many  small  communities  that  make  up  a 
county  are  dependent  upon  one  another,  requiring  organ¬ 
ized  cooperation  for  the  county  welfare,  so  all  the  counties 
of  a  state,  and  all  the  people  who  live  in  all  the  counties,  are 
interdependent  in  many  ways.  The  people  of  the  city  of 
Madison,  for  example,  depend  for  their  food  supply  not  only 
upon  the  farmers  of  Dane  County,  but  also  upon  those  of 
the  entire  state.  The  university  at  Madison  serves  not 
Dane  County  alone,  but  the  people  of  all  the  counties  of 
the  state.  It  is  important  that  the  public  schools  should 


WHAT  IS  OUR  COMMUNITY? 


39 


be  equally  good  in  all  counties  of  the  state  and  that  they 
should  be  managed  by  a  uniform  plan.  Roads  and  other 
means  of  transportation  are  a  matter  of  concern  to  the 
entire  state.  And  so  the  state  is  a  community,  organized 
with  a  government  to  secure  cooperation  among  all  the 
people  and  all  the  smaller  communities  that  compose  it. 
In  fact,  a  large  part  of  the  business  of  the  governments  of 
the  local  communities,  such  as  city  and  county  and  town¬ 
ship,  is  to  administer  the  laws  of  the  central  state  govern¬ 
ment. 

In  a  similar  manner,  the  48  states  of  the  Union,  with 
all  the  counties  and  smaller  communities  of  which  they 
consist,  comprise  our  great  national  community.  It  is  not 
always  easy  to  think  of  our  nation  as  a  community  because 
of  its  great  size  and  complexity;  but  it  is  quite  important 
that  we  should  think  of  it  in  this  way  if  we  are  to  have  a 
proper  understanding  of  our  national  government  and  of 
our  national  citizenship. 

When  we  speak  of  '‘our  community”  we  are  likely  to 
think  at  once  of  the  small  community  immediately  around 
us  —  our  neighborhood,  village,  or  city.  Our  membership 
in  these  local  communities  is  extremely  important,  and  will 
demand  no  small  part  of  our  attention.  But  it  is  equally 
important  to  be  fully  alive  to  our  membership  in  the  larger 
communities.  This  is  true  wherever  we  live;  but  there  is 
a  sense  in  which  our  national  community  is  peculiarly  im¬ 
portant  to  those  of  us  who  live  in  rural  communities.  The 
wants  of  people  in  cities  are,  as  a  rule,  looked  after  more 
completely  by  their  local  governments  than  is  the  case  in 
rural  communities.  The  people  of  rural  communities,  and 
especially  farmers  themselves,  are  directly  served  by  the 
national  government  in  a  great  variety  of  ways.  In  the 
next  chapter,  therefore,  we  shall  consider  our  nation  as  a 
community. 


CHAPTER  VII 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 

It  is  important  to  get  the  habit  of  thinking  of  our  nation 
as  a  community,  just  as  we  think  of  our  school  or  town  or 
rural  neighborhood  as  one.  This  is  not  always  easy  to  do 
because  of  its  huge  size  and  complicated  character.  It 
would  be  wrong,  too,  to  get  the  idea  that  it  is  a  perfect 
community  —  none  of  our  communities  is  perfect.  Conflicts 
of  interest  are  often  more  apparent  than  community  of 
interest.  Team  work  among  the  different  parts  and  groups 
that  make  up  our  nation  is  often  very  poor.  Although  our 
government  is  a  wonderfully  good  one,  it  is  still  only  an 
imperfect  means  of  cooperation.  We  are  far  from  being  a 
complete  democracy,  for  there  are  many  people  in  our 
nation  who  do  not  have  the  full  enjoyment  of  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness;  and  large  numbers  of  our 
“  self-go verning”  people  really  have  little  or  no  part  in 
government. 

It  need  not  give  us  an  unpatriotic  feeling  to  acknowledge 
the  imperfections  of  our  nation  or  of  our  government;  for 
communities  grow,  not  only  in  size,  but  also  in  ability  to 
perform  their  proper  work,  just  as  individuals  do.  We 
call  a  person  conceited  who  thinks  that  he  is  perfect,  es¬ 
pecially  if  he  boasts  of  his  supposed  perfection.  But  his 
conceit  is  itself  an  imperfection  and  a  hindrance  to  growth. 
That  person  gives  the  greatest  promise  for  the  future  who 
sets  a  high  mark,  but  who  recognizes  his  imperfections  and 
tries  to  correct  them  in  order  to  grow  to  the  mark.  As  he 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


4i 


grows  he  will  find  that  he  is  constantly  setting  his  mark 
still  higher. 

So  the  patriotic  citizen  is  not  one  who  is  unable  to  see 
defects  in  his  community,  or  refuses  to  acknowledge  them, 
but  one  who  has  high  civic  ideals  and  is  loyal  to  them,  who 
understands  in  what  respects  these  ideals  have  not  been 
reached,  and  who,  as  a  member  of  the  community  (see 
page  32),  contributes  everything  he  can  to  keep  it  grow¬ 
ing  in  the  right  direction. 

Our  nation  was  formed  in  the  beginning  by  the  union  of 
thirteen  states.  During  their  existence  as  English  colonies 
these  thirteen  communities  had  been  very  largely  inde¬ 
pendent  of  one  another,  though  all  had  common  ties  with 
England.  Attempts  on  the  part  of  groups  of  the  colonies 
to  unite  had  never  been  very  successful.  In  fact,  colonial 
history  affords  a  good  illustration  of  how  people  may  con¬ 
flict  in  their  attempt  to  carry  out  similar  purposes.  For 
example,  a  religious  interest  was  strong  in  all  of  the  colonies; 
but  the  forms  of  religious  belief  differed  to  such  an  extent 
as  to  lead,  at  various  times,  to  actual  persecution  of  one 
sect  by  another.  The  Puritans  of  New  England,  who  had 
left  England  to  secure  religious  freedom,  now  in  turn  per¬ 
secuted  the  Quakers.  Those  who  founded  Rhode  Island 
had  left  Massachusetts  largely  because  of  religious  differ¬ 
ences.  Maryland  alone  among  the  colonies  was  founded 
by  Catholics  and  Protestants  together,  with  an  agreement 
to  live  side  by  side  in  peace.  Religious  toleration  in  the 
other  colonies  was  very  rare. 

The  people  of  all  the  colonies  were  of  course  interested 
in  material  prosperity  and  the  production  of  wealth;  but 
this  interest  frequently  brought  them  into  conflict.  There 
were  disputes  over  boundaries  between  the  colonies,  and 
much  rivalry  and  jealousy  in  trade.  One  great  difference 
that  had  serious  consequences  in  later  years  resulted  from 


42 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


the  use  of  slave  labor  in  the  agriculture  of  the  South.  There 
were  differences  even  in  the  attitude  toward  education. 
Massachusetts  began  early  to  organize  schools  which  later 
developed  into  our  public  school  system;  while  a  governor 
of  Virginia  wrote  to  England,  “I  thank  God  there  are  no 
free  schools  nor  printing,  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have 
these  hundred  years.” 

It  was  difficult  to  overcome  such  differences  as  these  and 
to  secure  united  action  among  the  colonies  because  of  the 
lack  of  easy  means  of  communication.  Six  days  were  re¬ 
quired  for  the  trip  from  New  York  to  Boston,  and  at  a  later 
time  a  traveler  tells  of  spending  a  month  in  going  from 
New  York  to  Washington. 

The  government  in  England  managed  the  affairs  of  the 
colonies  more  for  its  own  benefit  than  for  theirs.  It  wanted 
the  products  of  America  sent  to  England,  and  not  ex¬ 
changed  among  the  colonies;  and  it  did  not  want  Ameri¬ 
can  manufactures  to  grow  up  to  compete  with  those  of 
England.  So  it  placed  restrictions  upon  American  trade 
and  industry.  It  was  this  policy  of  the  English  government, 
however,  that  finally  united  the  colonies  into  a  free  nation. 
Since  that  government  disregarded  what  all  the  colonies 
considered  to  be  their  rights,  especially  their  property 
rights,  they  declared  and  won  their  independence.  Each 
of  the  colonies  became  an  independent  state  with  its  own 
constitution  and  government.  Although  they  all  united 
in  carrying  on  the  war  for  independence,  they  experienced 
great  difficulty  in  securing  team  work.  The  Continental 
Congress  had  little  power  beyond  that  of  giving  advice  to 
the  states,  which  the  latter  followed  or  not  as  they  pleased,  j 
When  the  war  was  almost  over,  the  thirteen  states  agreed 
to  the  Articles  of  Confederation  which  provided  for  the 
continuance  of  a  central  government  consisting  of  dele¬ 
gates  from  the  several  states. 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


43 


The  government  under  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  how¬ 
ever,  was  unsuccessful  in  securing  anything  like  real  na¬ 
tional  cooperation.  Very  little  law-making  power  was 
given  to  the  Congress,  no  power  to  enforce  such  laws  as  it 
made,  and  no  power  to  levy  and  collect  taxes,  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  one  method  of  securing  cooperation  for  the 
common  good  (see  page  23).  The  result  was  several  years  of 
unutterable  confusion  which  have  been  called  ‘‘the  critical 
period  of  American  history,”  for  the  question  at  stake  was 
whether  a  number  of  self-governing  state  communities  with 
a  multitude  of  apparently  conflicting  interests  could  really 
become  a  nation. 

The  confusion  of  this  period  showed  how  dependent  each 
state  was  upon  all  the  others  for  its  safety  and  future  prog¬ 
ress.  During  the  war  Benjamin  Franklin  had  said,  “We 
must  all  hang  together  or  we  shall  all  hang  separately.” 
Even  without  a  strong  central  government,  the  states  had 
“hung  together”  sufficiently  to  win  the  war;  but  what  the 
wise  men  of  the  time  now  saw  was  the  need  for  a  govern¬ 
ment  so  organized  and  with  such  powers  as  to  secure  effec¬ 
tive  cooperation  among  all  the  states  and  all  the  people 
at  all  times  for  the  welfare  of  the  entire  Union,  while  it  left 
each  state  free  to  manage  its  own  local  affairs. 

Therefore  a  convention  of  delegates  from  all  the  states 
was  called  together  at  Philadelphia  to  suggest  changes  in 
the  government  of  the  Confederation  that  would  accomplish 
the  purpose.  The  result  was  the  framing  of  the  Constitu¬ 
tion  of  the  United  States  which  provided  for  a  government 
that  has  in  a  most  remarkable  way  met  the  needs  of  our 
rapidly  growing  nation.  It  would  be  well  to  read  again 
the  preamble  to  the  Constitution  in  the  light  of  the  experi¬ 
ences  of  the  states  here  described. 

The  creation  of  a  national  government  under  the  Con¬ 
stitution  did  not  completely  put  an  end  to  rivalries  and 


44 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


jealousies  and  conflicts  within  the  Union.  The  several 
sections  had  interests  of  their  own  that  sometimes  seemed 
to  outweigh  the  interests  of  the  nation  as  a  whole,  and  to 
set  one  section  off  against  the  others.  As  our  country 
grew,  these  sectional  differences  tended  to  become  greater 
and  sometimes  threatened  the  unity  of  the  nation.  If  it 
had  not  been  for  the  invention  of  the  steam  railroad,  the 
telegraph,  and  other  means  of  rapid  transportation  and 
communication,  it  is  possible  that  our  great  territory  of 
more  than  three  million  square  miles  and  its  population  of 
more  than  one  hundred  millions  could  not  have  been  held 
together  under  the  form  of  government  established  by  the 
Constitution. 

The  most  serious  of  these  sectional  differences  was  that 
between  the  North  and  South,  which  grew  out  of  the  slavery 
question.  It  required  four  years  of  civil  war  to  decide 
whether  we  should  remain  a  united  nation  or  not.  Although 
the  war  settled  the  question  in  favor  of  continued  union 
under  one  government,  the  feeling  of  sectional  difference 
did  not  at  once  disappear.  The  real  question  over  which  the 
North  and  the  South  fought  was  whether  the  existence  of 
slavery  within  a  state  was  a  matter  for  the  state  or  for  the 
nation  to  determine,  and  whether  a  state  had  the  right  to 
withdraw  from  the  Union  or  not.  The  war  settled  the 
question  against  "state  rights”  in  these  matters;  but  many 
questions  are  constantly  arising  to-day  in  regard  to  which 
it  is  difficult  to  determine  where  state  authority  ends  and 
national  authority  begins.  For  example,  the  national  Con¬ 
gress  recently  passed  a  law  with  the  intention  of  preventing 
the  employment  of  children  in  factories  anywhere  in  the 
United  States;  but  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
has  decided  that  Congress  went  beyond  its  power  in  doing 
so.  Education  has  always  been  considered  a  duty  of  the 
state,  and  recent  proposals  to  give  the  national  government 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


45 


larger  control  of  education  throughout  the  United  States 
have  met  with  some  opposition.  In  due  time  we  shall 
learn  more  about  the  relation  between  the  states  and  the 
nation.  Both  are  necessary.  But  while  the  importance  of 
the  state  community  has  in  no  wise  decreased  with  the 
growth  of  the  nation,  our  national  community  of  interests 
and  the  need  for  national  cooperation  have  been  constantly 
increasing. 

It  is  easier  now  than  formerly  to  think  of  our  nation  as 
a  community,  because  the  war  with  Germany  served  to 
arouse  our  “national  spirit,”  and  showed  very  clearly  the 
importance  in  our  national  life  of  those  elements  which 
characterize  all  community  life  —  common  purpose,  inter¬ 
dependence,  and  organized  cooperation  (see  Chapters  II-V). 
The  creation  of  a  national  army  did  much  to  bring  this 
about. 

When  the  benefits  which  come  to  the  nation  through  the  creation  of 
the  national  army  are  catalogued,  the  fact  that  it  has  welded  the  country 
into  a  homogeneous  society1  seeking  the  same  national  ends  and 
animated  by  the  same  national  ideals,  will  overtop  all  other  advantages. 
The  organization  of  the  selected  army  fuses  the  thousand  separate 
elements  making  up  the  United  States  into  one  steel-hard  mass.  Men 
of  the  North,  South,  East,  and  West  meet  and  mingle,  and  on  the  anvil 
of  war  become  citizens  worthy  of  the  liberty  won  by  the  first  American 
armies.2 

How  this  welding  of  the  parts  of  the  nation  together  was 
brought  about  by  the  war  is  suggested  by  the  words  of  an 
old  Confederate  soldier  who  wrote  to  a  friend  in  the  North: 
“During  the  war  between  the  states  I  was  a  rebel,  and  con¬ 
tinued  one  in  heart  until  this  great  war.  But  now  I  am  a 
devoted  follower  of  Uncle  Sam  and  endorse  him  in  every 
respect.” 

1  “Homogeneous  society”  —  a  society  or  community  all  of  whose 
parts  and  members  have  like  purposes  and  interests. 

2  Major  Fortesque,  in  National  Geographic  Magazine ,  Dec.,  1917.  ' 


46  TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 

The  fact  that  our  nation  contained  in  its  population 
large  numbers  of  people  from  practically  every  country  of 
Europe  caused  no  little  anxiety  when  we  entered  the  Euro¬ 
pean  war.  Our  population  embraces  a  hundred  different 
races  and  nationalities.  Of  these  ten  million  are  negroes 
and  336,000  Indians.  Thirty-three  million  are  of  foreign 
parentage,  and  of  these  thirteen  million  are  foreign-born. 
Five  million  do  not  speak  English,  and  there  are  1500  news¬ 
papers  in  the  United  States  printed  in  foreign  languages. 
Five  and  one-half  million  above  the  age  of  ten  years,  includ¬ 
ing  both  foreign  and  native,  can  not  read  nor  write  in  any 
language.  New  York  City  has  a  larger  Hebrew  population 
than  any  other  city  in  the  world,  contains  more  Italians 
than  Rome,  and  its  German  population  is  the  fourth  largest 
among  the  cities  of  the  world.  Pittsburgh  has  more  Serbs 
than  the  capital  of  Serbia.  It  is  said  that  there  were  more 
Greeks  subject  to  draft  in  the  American  army  than  there 
were  in  the  entire  army  of  Greece.  Would  all  these  people 
be  loyal  to  our  nation,  or  would  they  divide  it  against 
itself? 

The  war  in  fact  showed  us  that  there  were  some  among 
us  who  had  never  really  become  members  of  our  nation, 
and  who  were  dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety.  It  also 
showed  us  the  danger  that  comes  from  the  presence  of  so 
many  illiterates,  or  of  those  who  can  not  use  the  English 
language;  for  such  people,  even  though  loyal  in  spirit  to 
the  United  States,  can  not  understand  instructions  either 
in  the  army  or  in  industry,  and  otherwise  prevent  effec¬ 
tive  cooperation.  And  yet  the  most  striking  thing  that 
the  war  showed  us  in  regard  to  this  mixed  population  is 
that  the  great  mass  of  it,  regardless  of  color  or  place  of  birth, 
is  really  American  and  loyal  to  our  flag  and  the  ideas 
which  it  represents. 

Another  weakness  within  our  nation  that  the  war  em- 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


47 


phasized  is  the  lack  of  harmony  between  wage-earners  and 
their  employers.  There  were  many  sharp  conflicts  be¬ 
tween  them.  Strikes  occurred,  or  were  threatened,  in  fac¬ 
tories,  shipyards,  mines,  and  railroads,  that  blocked  the 
wheels  of  industry  at  a  time  when  the  nation  needed  to 
strain  every  nerve  to  provide  the  materials  of  war.  This 
lack  of  harmony  between  workmen  and  employers,  which 
in  war  threatened  our  national  safety,  has  existed  for  many 
years  and  has  always  been  an  obstacle  to  national  progress. 
But  the  common  purpose  of  winning  the  war,  in  most  cases, 
caused  employers  and  wage-earners  to  adjust  their  differ¬ 
ences.  In  nearly  every  case  one  side  or  the  other,  or  both 
sides,  yielded  certain  points  and  agreed  not  to  dispute  over 
others,  at  least  for  the  period  of  the  war.  The  national 
government  did  much  to  bring  this  about  by  the  creation 
of  labor  adjustment  boards  to  hear  complaints  from  either 
side  and  to  settle  disputes.  If  our  national  community  life 
is  to  develop  in  a  wholesome  way,  complete  cooperation 
between  workmen  and  employers  must  be  secured  and 
made  permanent  on  the  basis  of  interests  that  are  common 
to  both. 

Such  facts  as  these  show  how  easy  it  is,  in  a  huge,  com¬ 
plex  community  like  our  nation,  for  conflicts  to  arise  among 
different  sections  and  groups  of  the  population;  and  how 
difficult  it  is  always  to  see  the  common  interests  that  exist. 
But  they  also  show  how  such  conflicts  tend  to  disappear 
when  a  situation  arises  which  forces  us  to  think  of  the 
common  interests  instead  of  the  differences.  All  else  was 
forgotten  in  the  common  purpose  to  ‘‘win  the  war.”  No 
sacrifice  was  too  great  on  the  part  of  any  individual  in  order 
that  this  national  purpose  might  be  served.  Everywhere 
throughout  the  country,  in  cities  and  in  remote  rural  dis¬ 
tricts,  service  flags  in  the  windows  testified  that  the  homes 
of  the  land  were  offering  members  that  the  nation  and  its 


48 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


ideals  might  live.  And  where  families  could  not  send  mem¬ 
bers,  there  were  at  least  Red  Cross  emblems  and  liberty 
bond  and  war  savings  stamp  posters  to  indicate  that  men, 
women,  and  even  children  were  contributing  from  their 
savings  to  help  win  the  war.  In  every  city  and  hamlet  the 
women  and  children  were  knitting  and  making  bandages 
and  otherwise  working  for  the  support  and  comfort  of  their 
army  of  defenders.  In  every  household  people  were  saving 
food  and  fuel  and  clothing,  and  denying  themselves  familiar 
comforts  in  order  to  win  the  war.  The  entire  nation  was 
working  together  for  a  common  purpose. 

We  have  said  that  this  common  purpose  was  to  4 ‘win 
the  war.”  But  there  were  purposes  that  lie  much  deeper 
than  this,  without  which  it  would  not  have  been  worth  while 
to  enter  the  war  at  all.  As  we  saw  in  Chapter  I  (page  5), 
our  nation  is  founded  on  a  belief  in  the  right  of  every  one 
to  life  and  physical  well-being;  to  be  secure  in  one’s  rightful 
possession;  to  freedom  of  thought  —  education,  free  speech, 
a  free  press;  to  freedom  of  religion;  to  happiness  in  pleas¬ 
ant  surroundings  and  a  wholesome  social  life;  and,  above 
all,  to  a  voice  in  the  government  which  exists  to  protect 
these  rights.  The  war  has  made  us  feel  a  growing  national 
purpose  to  secure  for  all  men  an  ever  increasing  measure  of 
enjoyment  of  these  blessings  of  liberty. 

It  was  to  secure  a  larger  freedom  to  enjoy  these  rights, 
“for  ourselves  first  and  for  all  others  in  their  time,”  that 
our  nation  was  solidly  united  against  the  enemy  that  threat¬ 
ened  it  from  without.  But  it  was  with  this  same  purpose 
that  the  War  of  Independence  was  fought,  that  our  Con¬ 
stitution  was  adopted,  that  slavery  was  abolished,  that 
millions  of  people  from  foreign  lands  have  come  to  our 
shores.  It  is  this  common  purpose  that  makes  the  great 
mass  of  foreigners  in  our  country  Americans,  ready  to  fight 
for  America,  if  necessary  even  against  the  land  of  their 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY  49 

birth.  It  is  that  for  which  the  American  flag  stands  at  all 
times,  whether  in  peace  or  in  war. 

The  attempt  to  work  together  in  the  war  made  it  very 
apparent  how  dependent  the  nation  is  upon  all  its  parts, 
and  how  dependent  each  part  is  upon  all  the  others.  It  was 
often  said  that  “the  farmers  would  win  the  war.”  At  other 
times  it  was  said  to  be  ships,  or  fuel,  or  airplanes,  or  rail¬ 
road  transportation,  or  trained  scientists  and  technical 
workers.  The  truth  is,  of  course,  that  all  these  things  and 
many  more  were  absolutely  necessary,  and  that  no  one  of 
them  would  have  been  of  much  value  without  all  the  others. 

It  was  true  that  the  winning  of  the  war  depended  upon 
the  farmers,  because  they  are  the  producers  of  the  food  and 
of  the  raw  materials  for  textiles  without  which  the  nation 
and  every  group  and  person  in  it  would  have  been  helpless. 
But  the  farmer  could  not  supply  food  to  the  nation  with¬ 
out  machinery  for  its  production,  and  without  city  markets 
and  railroads  and  ships  for  its  distribution.  Machinery 
could  not  be  made,  nor  ships  and  locomotives  built,  with¬ 
out  steel.  For  the  manufacture  of  steel  there  must  be  iron 
and  fuel  and  tungsten  and  other  materials.  And  for  all 
these  things  there  must  be  inventors  and  skilled  mechanics, 
and  to  produce  these  there  must  be  schools.  And  so  we 
could  go  on  indefinitely  to  show  how  the  war  made  us  feel 
our  interdependence.  What  we  need  to  understand,  how¬ 
ever,  is  that  this  interdependence  is  characteristic  of  our 
national  life  at  all  times;  the  war  only  made  us  feel  it  more 
keenly. 

During  the  war,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  while  we  were 
devoting  our  national  energies  to  the  work  of  destruction 
incident  to  war,  we  as  a  nation  made  astonishing  progress 
in  many  ways  other  than  in  the  art  of  war  —  in  what  we 
might  call  nation-building.  In  some  ways  we  made  prog¬ 
ress  in  a  year  or  two  that  under  ordinary  circumstances 


So 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


might  have  required  a  generation.  A  striking  illustration 
of  this  is  in  the  development  of  a  great  fleet  of  merchant 
ships  at  a  rate  that  would  have  been  impossible  before  the 
war.  Beginning  with  almost  nothing  when  the  war  began, 
we  had  in  less  than  two  years  a  merchant  fleet  larger  than 
that  of  any  other  nation,  and  that  in  spite  of  the  constant 
destruction  of  ships  by  the  enemy.  The  chairman  of  the 
shipping  board  of  the  United  States  government  says  that 
this  is  because  the  necessities  of  the  war  made  the  whole 
nation  see  how  much  it  depends  upon  ships,  and  caused 
not  only  shipbuilders,  but  also  engineers  and  manufac¬ 
turers  and  business  men  and  the  navy  department  of  the 
government,  and  many  others,  to  concentrate  upon  this 
problem,  with  the  result  that  we  discovered  methods  of 
shipbuilding,  and  of  loading  and  unloading  and  operating 
ships  when  they  were  built,  that  will  probably  enable  us 
to  maintain  permanently  a  merchant  marine,  the  lack  of 
which  we  have  deplored  for  many  years,  but  which  we 
have  been  unsuccessful  in  acquiring. 

In  a  similar  way  we  discovered  and  brought  into  use 
valuable  natural  resources  of  whose  existence  we  had  largely 
been  ignorant  and  for  which  we  had  been  dependent  upon 
other  nations.  We  made  astonishing  progress  in  scientific 
knowledge,  and  especially  in  the  application  of  this  knowl¬ 
edge  to  invention  and  to  industrial  enterprises.  We  de¬ 
veloped  a  new  interest  in  agriculture,  and  learned  the  food 
values  of  many  products  that  had  formally  been  neglected. 
We  discovered  the  food  values  of  many  unfamiliar  varie¬ 
ties  of  fish  produced  in  our  waters,  and  learned  to  make 
leather  of  the  finest  quality  from  the  skins  of  whales  and 
sharks  and  other  marine  animals.  We  were  led  to  attack 
seriously  the  great  problem  of  suitable  housing  for  work¬ 
men,  and  had  an  important  lesson  in  the  relation  between 
wholesome  home  life  and  industrial  efficiency  (see  Chapter 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


51 

IX,  pages  67-68).  Foundations  were  laid  for  the  adjust¬ 
ment  of  the  unfortunate  differences  that  have  long  existed 
between  workmen  and  their  employers.  The  war  sug¬ 
gested  changes  in  our  educational  methods,  some  of  which 
will  doubtless  become  effective,  to  the  great  improvement  of 
our  public  schools,  colleges,  and  technical  schools. 

These  things  illustrate  how  our  national  progress  'was 
stimulated  when  the  war  forced  us  to  see  the  relation  of  all 
these  things  to  one  another  and  to  the  accomplishment  of  our 
national  purpose .  On  the  other  hand,  failure  to  recognize 
this  national  interdependence  means  slow  progress  as  a 
national  community.  When  the  war  began  our  nation 
was  said  to  be  “ unprepared.”  In  so  far  as  this  was  true  — 
and  it  was  true  in  many  particulars  —  it  was  because  in 
the  times  of  peace  before  the  war  we  had  not  thought 
enough  about  the  dependence  of  our  national  strength  and 
safety  upon  all  these  factors  in  our  national  life  working 
together.  And  so,  in  the  times  of  peace  after  the  wary  if  the 
purposes  for  which  our  nation  fought  are  to  be  fulfilled,  we 
must  continue  to  profit  by  this  lesson  which  the  war  has 
taught  us. 

The  4 ‘working  together’ ’  of  all  these  interdependent  parts 
is  the  important  thing.  “The  supreme  test  of  the  nation 
has  come,”  said  President  Wilson.  “We  must  all  speak,  act, 
and  serve  together.”  1 

“It  is  not  an  army  that  we  must  shape  and  train  for  war 
...  it  is  a  Nation.  To  this  end  our  people  must  draw 
close  in  one  compact  front  against  a  common  foe.  But 
this  can  not  be  if  each  man  pursues  a  private  purpose.  The 
Nation  needs  all  men,  but  it  needs  each  man,  not  in  the 
field  that  will  most  pleasure  him,  but  in  the  endeavor  that 
will  best  serve  the  common  good.  .  .  .  The  whole  Nation 


1  Message  to  the  American  People,  April  15,  1917. 


52 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


must  be  a  team,  in  which  each  man  must  play  the  part  for 
which  he  is  best  fitted.”  1 

We  had  some  suggestion  on  page  47  of  how  such  na¬ 
tional  team  work  became  a  fact.  “Do  your  bit!”  was  the 
watchword.  It  was  splendid  to  see  how  personal  interests 
gave  way  before  the  desire  to  serve  the  nation.  It  is  a 
thrilling  story  how  the  racial  elements  in  our  population 
forgot  their  differences  of  race  and  language  and  re¬ 
membered  only  that  they  were  Americans;  how  employers 
and  employees  laid  aside  their  differences ;  how  farmers  and 
business  men,  manufacturers  and  mechanics,  miners  and 
woodsmen,  inventors  and  teachers,  women  in  the  home 
and  children  in  the  schools,  doctors  and  nurses,  and  every 
other  class  and  group  subordinated  their  personal  interests 
to  the  one  national  purpose  of  winning  the  war  in  order  that 
“the  world  might  become  a  decent  place  in  which  to  live.” 

As  soon  as  the  United  States  entered  the  war  Washington, 
the  nation’s  capital,  became  filled  with  people  from  all 
parts  of  the  country  who  wanted  to  help  in  some  way. 
Some  were  called  there  by  the  government;  others  came 
to  volunteer  their  services  and  to  offer  ideas  that  they 
thought  useful.  Many  came  as  representatives  of  organ¬ 
izations  —  business  and  industrial  organizations,  scientific 
associations,  civic  societies.  New  committees  and  associa¬ 
tions  were  formed,  until  the  number  of  voluntary  citizen 
organizations  eager  to  do  “war  work”  became  almost  too 
numerous  to  remember.  They  were  all  an  indication  of  the 
desire  of  the  people  to  do  their  part  in  the  national  enterprise. 

But  there  followed  a  period  of  confusion.  All  these 
organizations  and  the  people  which  they  represented  wanted 
to  help,  but  they  did  not  always  know  just  what  to  do  nor 
how  to  do  it.  Each  organization  had  its  own  ideas  which 
it  often  magnified  above  all  others.  Different  organizations 
1  Conscription  Proclamation,  May  18,  1917. 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


53 


wanted  to  accomplish  the  same  purpose,  but  wanted  to  do 
it  in  different  ways.  Often  they  duplicated  one  another’s 
efforts.  A  war  could  not  be  won  under  such  conditions. 
But  out  of  all  this  confusion  there  finally  developed  order, 
and  this  was  because  the  various  organizations  of  people 
realized  that  if  they  were  to  accomplish  anything  they 
must  work  in  cooperation  with  the  national  government, 
whose  business  it  was,  after  all,  to  organize  the  nation  for 
united  action.  In  fact,  it  was  for  this  reason  that  they 
came  to  Washington.  Many  of  them  sought  to  influence 
the  government  to  adopt  this  or  that  plan,  and  sometimes 
succeeded;  but  it  was  the  government  that  finally  decided 
what  plans  were  to  be  adopted,  and  all  of  the  effort  of  the 
numerous  organizations  and  of  individuals  must  be  brought 
into  harmony  with  these. 

The  period  of  the  war  affords  many  striking  examples 
of  national  cooperation  secured  by  the  government.  It  may 
have  seemed  sometimes  that  our  government  interfered 
with  personal  freedom  to  an  unreasonable  extent,  as  when 
it  limited  the  amount  of  coal  we  could  buy,  fixed  the  prices 
of  many  articles,  determined  the  wages  that  should  be  paid 
for  labor,  took  over  the  management  of  the  railroads  and 
of  the  telegraph  and  telephone  lines,  and  did  many  other 
things  that  it  never  had  done  in  time  of  peace.  We  expect 
government  to  exercise  powers  in  war  time  that  it  would 
not  be  permitted  to  exercise  in  time  of  peace.  We  are  even 
willing  to  be  ruled  by  government ,  as  in  an  autocracy,  instead 
of  ruling  through  government  according  to  democratic  ideas, 
if  it  is  necessary  to  win  the  war.  But  it  can  be  shown  that 
even  during  the  war  the  government,  with  all  its  unusual 
powers,  did  not  '‘ride  rough-shod”  over  the  people,  but 
sought  to  “make  them  partners  in  an  enterprise  which 
after  all  was  their  own.”  The  nation  was  fighting  for  its 
life  and  for  the  very  principles  upon  which  it  was  founded. 


54 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


and  it  was  necessary  that  cooperation  should  be  complete 
and  effective.  This  was  what  the  government  sought,  and 
it  exercised  its  powers  by  inviting  and  obtaining  national 
cooperation  to  a  remarkable  extent. 

Our  national  army  was  created  by  a  “ selective’ ’  draft, 
or  conscription.  Conscription  had  formerly  been  looked 
upon  with  disfavor  as  a  form  of  forced  military  service.  A 
volunteer  army  was  thought  to  be  more  in  harmony  with 
a  democratic  form  of  government.  But  the  draft  is  now 
seen  to  be  far  more  democratic  than  a  volunteer  army  be¬ 
cause  it  treats  all  able-bodied  men  alike,  instead  of  leaving 
the  fighting  to  those  who  are  most  courageous  and  most 
patriotic  while  those  who  are  inclined  to  shirk  may  easily 
do  so.  Moreover,  the  selective  draft  means  the  selection  of 
men  to  serve  in  the  capacity  for  which  they  are  best  fitted. 
In  Great  Britain,  under  a  volunteer  system,  and  in  France, 
under  a  system  of  compulsory  military  service  for  all  men, 
thousands  of  brave  men  went  to  the  trenches  in  the  early 
days  of  the  war  who,  because  of  their  training,  should  have 
been  kept  at  home  to  perform  the  vast  amount  of  skilled 
labor  and  scientific  work  which  this  war  demanded.  War 
industry,  without  which  there  could  be  no  fighting,  was 
thus  greatly  hampered. 

By  our  selective  draft,  on  the  other  hand,  while  every 
man  was  expected  to  do  his  share,  each  was  selected  as 
far  as  possible  to  do  the  thing  which  he  could  do  best  and 
therefore  which  would  best  serve  the  country.  It  also  sought 
to  prevent  those  who  had  families  dependent  upon  them 
from  going  to  war  until  they  were  absolutely  needed.  Thus 
the  selective  draft  is  an  example  of  government  organizing 
our  national  man  power  for  more  effective  team  work  and 
with  less  hardship  than  if  it  had  been  left  to  voluntary 
action. 

The  United  States  Food  Administration  was  created  by 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


55 


the  President  to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  a  law  passed 
by  Congress  “to  provide  further  for  the  national  security 
and  defense  by  encouraging  the  production,  conserving  the 
supply,  and  controlling  the  distribution  of  food  products 
and  fuel.”  The  President  placed  at  its  head  a  man  in  whom 
the  people  of  the  country  had  great  confidence  because  of 
his  experience  and  success  in  organizing  and  managing  the 
Belgian  relief  work,  Mr.  Herbert  Hoover.  He  gathered 
around  him  men  familiar  with  the  problems  relating  to  the 
food  supply  of  the  nation,  and  then  proceeded  to  enlighten 
the  country  in  regard  to  the  nature  of  these  problems  and  to 
seek  for  the  cooperation  of  the  people  in  solving  them. 

As  soon  as  he  was  appointed,  Mr.  Hoover  issued  a  state¬ 
ment  containing  the  following  facts : 

Whereas  we  exported  before  the  war  but  80,000,000  bushels  of  wheat 
per  annum,  this  year  we  must  find  for  all  our  allies  225,000,000  bushels, 
and  this  in  the  face  of  a  short  crop.  .  .  .  France  and  Italy  formerly 
produced  their  own  sugar,  while  England  and  Ireland  imported  largely 
from  Germany.  Owing  to  the  inability  of  the  first-named  to  produce 
more  than  one  third  of  their  needs,  and  the  necessity  for  the  others  to 
import  from  other  markets,  they  must  all  come  to  the  West  Indies  for 
their  very  large  supplies,  and  therefore  deplete  our  resources. 

If  we  can  reduce  our  consumption  of  wheat  flour  by  1  pound,  our 
meat  by  7  ounces,  our  sugar  by  7  ounces,  our  fat  by  7  ounces  per  person 
per  week ,  these  quantities  multiplied  by  100,000,000  (the  population  of 
the  United  States)  will  immeasurably  aid  and  encourage  our  allies,  help 
our  own  growing  armies,  and  so  effectively  serve  the  great  and  noble 
cause  of  humanity  in  which  our  nation  has  embarked. 

This  illustrates  how  the  Food  Administration  sought 
cooperation.  It  “made  partners”  of  the  people,  explained 
to  them  the  situation,  and  asked  them  to  help  as  individuals. 
It  showed  the  nation  what  it  must  do  if  it  were  to  be  success¬ 
ful  in  its  undertaking.  It  is  true  that  the  President  had 
large  powers  to  enforce  observance  of  the  rules  outlined  by 
the  Food  Administration,  but  it  was  only  in  the  exceptional 


5^ 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


case  of  the  individual  consumer  and  producer  who  refused 
to  cooperate  for  the  common  good  that  it  became  necessary 
to  use  the  power.  The  method  of  democracy  is  to  point 
out  clearly  how  the  desired  result  may  be  obtained  and  leave 
it  to  the  people  to  govern  themselves  accordingly. 

After  a  year  of  the  war  a  member  of  the  Food  Adminis¬ 
tration  is  quoted  as  saying:1  “There’s  never  been  anything 
like  it  in  history.  ...  We  asked  the  American  people  to  do 
voluntarily  more  than  any  other  people  has  ever  been  asked 
to  do  under  compulsion.  And  the  American  people  made 
good!” 

It  is  our  idea  of  democracy  that  the  largest  possible  meas¬ 
ure  of  freedom  for  self-government  be  left  to  the  individ¬ 
ual  citizen  and  to  the  local  community.  The  illustrations 
given  are  only  a  few  of  many  that  might  be  given  to  show 
how  our  national  government  respected  this  idea  even  in  the 
time  of  war  when  the  people  were  more  than  usually  ready 
to  sacrifice  their  individual  rights  in  order  that  the  principles 
upon  which  our  nation  is  founded  might  live.  But  it  is  true 
to  even  a  greater  extent  in  time  of  peace.  Doubtless  much 
of  the  unusual  government  machinery  created  for  the  war 
emergency  will  cease  to  exist  with  the  return  of  peace.  And 
yet  one  of  the  most  important  lessons  that  the  war  should 
teach  us  is  that  we  have  little  to  fear  from  our  national  gov¬ 
ernment  as  long  as  we  and  those  to  whom  we  entrust  its 
management  always  keep  in  mind  its  real  purpose,  which  is 
to  show  us  how  to  work  together  effectively  as  a  nation  and 
to  help  us  to  do  it. 

All  through  this  study  we  are  going  to  observe  how  in  the 
ordinary  affairs  of  life  our  national  government  serves  us  in 
this  respect.  One  thing  we  shall  try  especially  to  learn  is 
that  we  have  a  great  national  purpose  all  the  time ,  in  peace 

1  In  an  article  of  “  Your  Wheatless  Days,”  by  W.  A.  Wolff,  in  Collier's 
Weekly ,  Aug.  17,  1918. 


OUR  NATIONAL  COMMUNITY 


57 


as  well  as  in  war.  In  fact,  peace  is  a  part  of  that  purpose. 
We  went  to  war  because  without  it  there  could  be  no  as¬ 
surance  of  a  lasting  peace.  While  we  fought  to  defend  our 
national  purpose  and  our  national  ideals  against  a  powerful 
foe  from  without,  this  purpose  and  these  ideals  can  not  be 
fully  achieved  by  the  war  alone.  They  can  be  finally 
achieved  only  by  ourselves  as  we  develop,  day  by  day,  our 
national  community  life.  To  do  this  we  must  always  keep 
in  mind  our  great  national  purpose,  we  must  realize  our 
dependence  upon  one  another  in  achieving  this  purpose,  and 
we  must  make  our  national  team  work  as  perfect  as  it  can 
be  made.  Above  all,  we  must  realize  that,  in  peace  as  in 
war,  every  man  counts  in  our  national  community  life.  As 
President  Wilson  said, 

“  The  Nation  needs  all  men ,  but  it  needs  each  man .  .  .  . 

“  The  whole  Nation  must  be  a  team ,  in  which  each  man  shall 
play  the  part  for  which  he  is  best  fitted.” 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  HOME 

“No  nation  can  be  destroyed  while  it  possesses  a 
good  home  life.11 

The  home  is  the  smallest,  the  simplest,  and  the  most 
familiar  community  of  which  we  are  members.  In  many 
respects  it  is  also  the  most  important.  The  quotation  with 
which  this  chapter  opens  suggests  this. 

The  home  is  important  (i)  because  of  what  it  does  for  its 
own  members,  and  (2)  because  of  what  it  does  for  the  larger 
community  of  which  it  is  a  part.  We  shall  consider  first 
what  it  does  for  its  own  members. 

Under  the  conditions  of  pioneer  life  the  wants  of  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  family  were  provided  for  almost  entirely  by  their 
own  united  efforts.  They  built  their  own  dwelling  from 
materials  which  they  themselves  procured  from  the  forest. 
They  made  their  living  from  the  land  which  they  occupied, 
with  tools  which  were  largely  homemade.  They  provided 
their  own  defense  against  attack  from  without  and  against 
sickness  within.  Such  education  as  the  children  obtained 
was  of  the  most  practical  kind,  and  was  obtained  by  actual 
experience  in  their  daily  work  supplemented  by  such  in¬ 
struction  as  parents  and  older  brothers  and  sisters  could 
give.  There  was  little  social  life  except  within  the  family 
circle. 

When  other  homes  were  built  in  the  neighborhood  a  larger 
community  life  began.  The  neighboring  homes  came  to 
depend  upon  one  another  and  to  cooperate  in  many  ways. 
The  store  at  the  crossroads  provided  for  many  wants  that 


THE  HOME 


59 


each  home  had  formerly  provided  for  itself.  The  doctor 
who  came  to  live  in  the  community  relieved  the  home  of 
much  anxiety  in  case  of  sickness.  The  education  of  the 
children  was  in  part,  at  least,  turned  over  to  the  community 
school.  And  so,  as  a  community  grows,  the  home  shifts 
much  of  the  responsibility  for  providing  for  the  wants  of  its 
members  upon  the  community  agencies. 

This  shifting  of  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of  citizens 
from  the  home  to  the  larger  community  is  carried  furthest 
in  cities.  Almost  everything  wanted  in  the  home  may  be 
bought  in  the  city  shops,  and  work  that  is  done  in  the  home 
for  the  family,  such  as  repair  work,  dressmaking,  laundry 
work,  and  cooking  is  likely  to  be  done  by  people  brought  in 
from  outside.  Water  is  piped  in  from  a  public  water  supply 
and  sewage  is  piped  out  through  public  sewers.  Gas  and 
electricity  for  lighting  and  heating  are  furnished  by  city 
plants.  Since  many  city  homes  have  not  a  spot  of  ground 
for  a  garden  or  for  outdoor  play,  they  depend  upon  public 
parks  and  playgrounds  provided  by  the  city.  These  are 
among  the  many  so-called  advantages  of  city  life. 

When  so  much  is  done  for  the  citizens  by  the  larger  com¬ 
munity  agencies,  there  is  danger  that  the  family  may  forget 
that  it  still  has  a  great  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of  its 
members  in  connection  with  every  want  of  life.  For  no 
matter  how. good  the  community's  arrangements  for  health 
protection  may  be,  the  health  of  every  citizen  depends  more 
upon  the  home  than  upon  any  other  agency.  No  matter 
how  good  the  schools,  the  home  always  has  great  respon¬ 
sibility  for  the  education  of  the  children,  both  within  the 
home  itself  and  through  cooperation  with  the  schools.  No 
matter  how  many  social  organizations  and  places  of  amuse¬ 
ment  the  community  may  afford,  the  social  recreational  life 
of  the  home  is  the  most  important  of  all  and  the  most  far- 
reaching  in  its  influence.  No  matter  how  excellent  the 


6o 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


form  of  government  in  a  community  may  be,  its  results  will 
be  very  imperfect  unless  the  government  in  each  home  is 
good. 

The  home  has  especial  importance  in  the  rural  com¬ 
munity  of  to-day.  The  rural  home  is  no  longer  so  isolated 
and  self-dependent  as  the  pioneer  home,  but  the  life  of  the 
rural  citizen  is  much  more  dependent  upon  efforts  within 
the  home  itself  than  the  life  of  the  city  resident.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  the  business  of  farming  by  which  the  family  living  is 
secured  is  carried  on  at  home,  and,  as  a  rule,  all  the  members 
of  the  family  have  some  part  in  it.  It  is  a  cooperative  family 
enterprise  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  any  other  modern 
business. 

In  cities,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  the  work  by  which  the  family 
living  is  earned  is  done  away  from  home,  and  very  often  no  member  of 
the  family  except  the  father  has  any  direct  part  in  it.  There  are 
numerous  cases,  however,  where  the  mother  and  even  the  children  go 
out  to  work,  and  in  such  cases  the  home  life  is  seriously  interfered  with. 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  rural  home  in  the  United  States 
to-day  that  is  not  near  enough  to  a  schoolhouse  to  enable 
the  children  to  attend  it,  at  least  for  an  elementary  educa¬ 
tion.  Unfortunately  high  schools  are  not  yet  easily  access¬ 
ible  in  all  rural  communities.  But  whether  the  education 
afforded  by  the  rural  school  is  of  the  best  or  not,  the  boy  or 
girl  on  the  farm  gets  in  addition  a  kind  of  education  through 
the  varied  occupations  of  the  farm  life  that  the  city  boy  or 
girl  does  not  get,  and  for  which  the  city  schools  have  tried 
in  vain  to  find  an  adequate  substitute.  It  is  remarkable 
how  many  of  the  successful  men  and  women  of  our  country  j 
were  raised  on  farms;  and  they  almost  always  bear  witness 
to  the  value  of  the  training  received  there. 

So  in  matters  of  health,  of  social  life  and  recreation,  of 
pleasant  and  beautiful  surroundings,  the  rural  home  must 
depend  very  largely  upon  itself.  The  strength  and  happiness 


THE  HOME 


61 


of  the  community,  of  our  nation  itself,  depend  largely  upon 
the  extent  to  which  the  homes  perform  their  proper  work  in 
providing  for  the  wants  of  their  members. 

We  have  read  in  an  earlier  chapter  (page  5)  that  “our 
national  purpose  is  to  transmute  days  of  dreary  work  into 
happier  lives  —  for  ourselves  first  and  for  all  others  in  their 
time.”  This  purpose  can  not  be  fully  achieved  if  it  is  not 
first  of  all  achieved  in  the  home.  One  of  the  objections 
often  raised  to  life  on  the  farm  is  that  it  is  a  life  of  drudgery, 
of  few  conveniences  and  comforts,  of  long  hours,  hard  work, 
and  little  recreation.  Happily  this  is  not  so  true  as  it  once 
was.  Labor-saving  machinery,  better  methods  of  trans¬ 
portation  and  communication,  better  schools,  have  done 
much  to  improve  conditions  of  rural  home  life.  But  oc¬ 
casionally  there  still  come  statements  like  the  following  from 
some  of  the  women  in  the  farm  homes : 

In  many  homes  life  on  the  farm  is  a  somewhat  one-sided  affair. 
Many  times  the  spare  money  above  living  expenses  is  expended  on 
costly  machinery  and  farm  implements  to  make  the  farmer’s  work 
lighter;  on  more  land  where  there  is  already  a  sufficiency;  on  expensive 
horses  and  cattle  and  new  out-buildings;  while  little  or  nothing  is  done 
for  home  improvement  and  no  provision  made  for  the  comfort  and  con¬ 
venience  of  the  women  of  the  family. 

If  a  silo  will  help  to  reduce  the  man’s  labor,  a  vacuum  cleaner  will  do 
likewise  for  his  wife.  If  the  stock  at  the  barn  needs  a  good  water  system 
to  help  it  grow,  the  stock  in  the  house  needs  it  too,  and  needs  it  warm  for 
baths.  You  see  many  a  farm  where  there  is  a  cement  floor  in  the  bam, 
while  the  cellar  in  the  house  is  awful;  a  sheep  dip,  but  no  bathtub;  a 
fine  buggy  and  a  poor  baby  carriage.  On  many  farms  a  hundred 
dollars  in  cash  are  not  spent  in  the  home  in  a  year. 

These  are  not  meant  as  complaints  about  the  purchase 
of  labor-saving  farm  machinery.  Such  complaints  would  be 
shortsighted,  for  it  is  only  by  improved  methods  of  farming 
that  the  means  and  the  leisure  can  be  found  to  enrich  the 
home  life  in  every  way.  But  the  advantages  gained  by  im- 


62 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


provements  that  increase  the  farmer’s  returns  are  largely 
lost  if  they  do  not  at  the  same  time  bring  ‘‘happier  lives” 
to  the  family  as  a  whole.  Cooperation  is  not  real  if  it  is  one¬ 
sided.  It  is  necessary  on  most  farms  that  the  entire  family 
cooperate  in  the  business  of  farming,  which  is  after  all  the 
business  of  the  man;  but  it  is  equally  important  that  there 
be  cooperation  in  every  phase  of  the  household  work  and 
home  life. 

The  farm  home  is  not  only  the  place  where  the  family 
living  is  earned;  it  is  also  the  place  where  the  family  life  is 
lived.  Democracy  aims  at  equal  opportunity  to  enjoy  “life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness”;  “days  of  dreary 
work”  must  be  transmuted  into  “happier  lives”  for  the 
women  and  children  as  well  as  for  the  men.  Unless  this  is 
done  in  the  home  there  is  little  chance  of  its  being  done 
at  all. 

The  following  story  is  told  of  a  housekeeper  in  a  farm 
home  in  one  of  the  sections  of  the  West  which  have  been 
irrigated  by  our  government: 

This  little  woman  saw  in  the  sacred  rite  of  old-school  housekeepers 
something  more  than  scrubbing  and  polishing.  .  .  .  When  her  house- 
cleaning  was  over  she  knew  just  what  linen  she  would  need  during  the 
coming  year,  just  how  much  fruit  and  vegetables  she  would  need  to 
can  or  preserve  or  dry,  just  what  clothing  must  be  replaced  or  repaired, 
and  what  dishes  would  be  needed  to  keep  her  set  complete.  She  not 
only  made  changes  to  improve  the  appearance  of  her  house,  but  planned 
and  made  the  changes  in  her  workshop  which  would  save  steps  and  make 
her  work  as  easy  as  possible .  When  her  mind  got  to  work,  housekeeping 
became  a  game,  the  object  being  to  eliminate  all  unnecessary  labor. 
Her  benches  and  tables  and  sinks  were  raised  to  the  proper  height  and 
she  became  ashamed  of  the  back-breaking  energy  she  had  wasted  bend¬ 
ing  over  them.  A  high  stool,  made  by  removing  the  back  and  arms 
from  the  baby’s  outgrown  high  chair,  made  dishwashing  and  ironing 
much  easier.  She  has  been  housekeeping  intelligently  a  dozen  years, 
yet  at  each  housecleaning  or  stock-taking  period  she  installs  some  new 
labor  saver. 


THE  HOME 


63 


She  not  only  makes  her  head  save  her  heels,  but  she  takes  another 
kind  of  inventory  which  is  as  well  worth  while.  It  is  the  inventory 
which  we  all  need  to  take  of  ourselves  to  be  sure  that  we  are  making  the 
best  of  our  opportunities  instead  of  drifting  along  day  by  day  in  a  rut. 
She  searches  out  the  hidden  places  in  her  soul  to  see  if  she  is  just  as 
patient,  as  thoughtful,  as  cheerful  as  she  might  be.1  .  .  . 

In  some  rural  communities  the  home  has  been  relieved  of 
much  of  the  household  drudgery  by  the  development  of  co¬ 
operative  creameries,  cooperative  laundries,  and  other  com¬ 
munity  institutions  to  do  work  that  was  formerly  done 
entirely  in  the  home.  In  such  cooperative  enterprises 
citizens  of  the  community  buy  shares  of  stock  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Fruit  Growers'  Association  (page  16).  In  one  com¬ 
munity  in  Michigan  “a  vote  was  taken,  the  women  voting 
as  well  as  the  men,  to  determine  the  sentiment  of  the  com¬ 
munity  on  the  establishment  of  such  a  laundry,  and  the  vote 
was  so  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  the  proposition  that  the 
Farmers'  Club  promptly  called  a  meeting  to  promote  the 
enterprise.  ”  An  addition  was  built  to  the  cooperative 
creamery  which  the  community  already  possessed,  so  that 
the  same  steam  plant  could  be  used  for  both.  The  farmers 
brought  their  laundry  when  they  brought  their  cream,  and 
carried  it  back  on  the  next  trip.  4 'The  laundry  has  been 
successful  in  relieving  the  hard  life  of  a  farmer's  wife,  and  in 
addition  has  been  not  only  self-sustaining  but  a  profitable 
institution."  One  of  the  women  of  the  community  says: 

It  has  lightened  the  work  in  the  home  to  such  an  extent  that  one  can 
manage  the  work  without  keeping  help,  which  is  very  scarce  and  high 
priced,  when  it  would  be  impossible  to  do  so  if  the  washing  was  included 
with  our  other  duties. 

And  another  writes: 

1  Reclamation  Record ,  Feb.  1918,  p.  55,  “Project  Women  and  their 
Materials”  by  Mrs.  Louella  Littlepage. 


64 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


This  change  gives  me  two  days  of  recreation  that  I  can  call  my  own 
every  week  and  also  gives  me  more  time  in  which  to  accomplish  the 
household  duties.1 

A  great  deal  of  help  is  now  being  given  to  the  home  by  the 
government,  and  this  is  especially  true  in  the  case  of  the 
rural  home.  The  public  schools,  both  in  city  and  country, 
now  consider  home-making  and  “home  economics”  as 
worthy  of  a  place  in  the  course  of  study  as  geography  and 
mathematics.  State  agricultural  colleges  are  beginning  to 
give  as  much  attention  to  these  subjects  as  they  do  to  soils 
and  fertilizers  and  stock-breeding.  Moreover,  the  colleges 
conduct  “ extension  courses,”  sending  teachers  trained  in  the 
art  of  home-making  to  give  instruction  to  women  and  girls 
in  every  part  of  the  state.  They  assist  in  organizing  clubs 
of  girls  and  women  to  study  various  aspects  of  home¬ 
making  and  housekeeping,  and  give  demonstrations  of  the 
most  successful  methods  of  cooking,  of  canning,  and  of 
other  activities  connected  with  home  life  on  the  farm,  as 
well  as  Of  labor-saving  devices  in  the  household.  The  state 
agricultural  colleges  have  the  cooperation  of  the  Department 
of  Agriculture  of  the  national  government  in  all  this  work. 

In  the  Year  Book  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  for 
1916,  there  is  an  account  of  results  derived  from  home 
demonstration  work  in  the  southern  states.  The  following 
story  of  what  Ruth  Anderson  accomplished  is  a  good  illus¬ 
tration  of  the  possibilities  of  this  work : 

Ruth  Anderson,  of  Etowah  County,  Ala.,  in  her  second  year  of  club 
work,  had  an  excellent  plat  of  one  tenth  of  an  acre  of  beans  and  toma¬ 
toes.  She  is  the  second  girl  in  a  family  of  eleven,  and  takes  a  great 
interest  in  her  club  work.  The  family  home  was  small,  dark,  and 
crowded,  and  somewhat  unattractive.  One  day  a  carpenter  friend  of 
her  father  saw  her  one  tenth  of  an  acre  and  said  he  wished  he  had  time 
to  plant  a  garden.  She  told  him  she  would  furnish  vegetables  in  ex- 

1  “A  Successful  Rural  Cooperative  Laundry,"  in  the  Year  Book , 
Department  of  Agriculture,  1915,  pp.  189-194. 


THE  HOME 


65 


change  for  some  of  his  time ....  After  awhile  a  bargain  was  made  by 
which  the  carpenter  agreed  to  begin  work  on  the  remodeling  of  the 
house  if  Ruth  would  furnish  him  with  fresh  and  canned  vegetables  for 
the  season. 

The  other  members  of  the  family  were  soon  interested  in  this  under¬ 
taking  and  worked  willingly  to  contribute  their  share  to.  its  success. 
When  the  house  was  partly  finished  Ruth  won  a  canning-club  prize 
given  by  a  hardware  merchant  in  Gadsden,  the  county  seat.  Silverware 
was  offered  her,  but,  intent  upon  completing  the  new  house,  she  asked 
the  merchant  how  much  a  front  door  of  glass  would  cost,  and  learned 
that  she  could  get  the  door ,  side  lights,  and  windows  for  the  price  of  the 
silverware.  In  this  way  Ruth  brought  light  and  joy  to  her  family  with 
her  windows  and  door.  To-day  they  live  in  a  pretty  bungalow  that  she 
helped  to  build  with  her  gardening  and  canning  work.  At  the  age  of 
14,  in  the  second  year  of  her  work,  Ruth  put  up  700  cans  of  tomatoes 
and  750  cans  of  beans.1 

Ruth's  dwelling  before  and  after  she  began  her  work  is 
shown  in  the  accompanying  illustrations. 

The  national  government  is  helping  in  the  work  of  home* 
making  in  other  ways  than  those  suggested  above,  and 
through  other  departments  than  that  of  agriculture.  In 
the  Department  of  the  Interior  the  General  Land  Office, 
the  Bureau  of  Education,  the  Reclamation  Service,  the  Office 
of  Indian  Affairs,  are  all  doing  work  to  improve  the  homes 
of  the  land.  So,  also,  is  the  Public  Health  Service  of  the 
Treasury  Department;  the  Bureau  of  Standards  in  the  De¬ 
partment  of  Commerce;  the  Children's  Bureau  in  the 
Department  of  Labor. 

Why  does  our  government  take  such  an  active  interest  in 
home-making?  This  question  brings  us  to  the  second  part 
of  our  study  of  the  home:  what  the  home  does  for  the  com¬ 
munity  of  which  it  is  a  part.  For  it  is  because  of  what  the 
home  does  for  the  community  as  a  whole  that  the  govern¬ 
ment  takes  such  interest  in  it. 

1  “Effect  of  Home  Demonstration  Work  in  the  South,”  in  1916  Year 
Book  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  p.  254. 


CHAPTER  IX 


WHY  GOVERNMENT  HELPS  IN  HOME-MAKING 

• 

Our  nation  requires  healthy  citizens,  intelligent  citizens, 
prosperous  and  happy  citizens.  The  home  can  do  more  to 
produce  such  citizens  than  any  other  community  agency. 
Therefore  the  nation  is  wise  to  look  after  its  homes. 

People  can  not  do  their  work  well  if  they  live  in  unwhole¬ 
some  or  unpleasant  homes.  This  was  made  clear  during 
the  great  war.  The  lack  of  suitable  living  places  for  work¬ 
men  and  their  families  was  one  of  the  chief  obstacles  to  ship¬ 
building  and  munitions  manufacture  during  the  early  part 
of  the  war.  England  found  this  out  as  well  as  the  United 
States,  and  one  of  the  first  things  both  countries  had  to  do 
was  to  take  measures  to  provide  proper  home  conditions  for 
those  who  were  engaged  in  supplying  the  nation’s  needs. 
During  the  first  year  of  the  war  our  Congress  appropriated 
$200,000,000  to  build  houses  for  industrial  workers. 

The  problem  of  securing  good  physical  conditions  of 
home  life  has  naturally  been  greatest  in  crowded  industrial 
centers,  but  it  is  by  no  means  absent  in  small  communities, 
or  even  in  the  open  country.  One  writer  describes 

a  certain  farm  house  where  five  people  were  accustomed  to  sleep  in 
one  not  very  large  bedroom,  which  had  only  one  small  window,  and 
even  that  was  nailed  shut;  one  of  these  five  had  incipient  tuberculosis. 
These  people  were  well-to-do  farmers,  living  in  a  large  twelve  room, 
stone  house  and  simply  crowded  into  one  room  for  the  sake  of  mistaken 
economy  —  presumably  to  save  coal  arid  wood. 

Many  such  cases  could  be  described,  not  only  in  the  more 
remote  and  backward  regions,  but  even  in  prosperous  farm¬ 
ing  communities. 


WHY  GOVERNMENT  HELPS  IN  HOME-MAKING  67 

What  is  the  result  of  this  overcrowding  and  lack  of  proper  housing 
in  the  country?  Just  exactly  the  same  as  in  the  great  cities  —  lack  of 
efficiency,  disease,  and  premature  death  to  many.  .  .  .  While  the 
great  majority  of  people  subjected  to  overcrowding  and  bad  housing 
conditions  do  not  prematurely  die,  yet  they  have  a  lessened  physical 
and  mental  vigor,  are  less  able  to  do  properly  their  daily  work,  and  not 
only  become  a  loss  to  themselves  and  their  families,  but  to  the  state.1 

Some  of  our  states  and  many  of  our  cities  have  laws  to 
regulate  housing  conditions,  but  such  laws  seldom  apply  to 
small  communities.  In  cities  where  people  live  crowded 
together  in  closely  built  city  blocks,  unsanitary  conditions 
in  one  home  endanger  the  health  of  the  entire  community. 
There  is  also  danger  from  fire,  and  vice  and  crime  may  breed 
and  spread  quickly  and  unseen.  The  community  is  driven, 
therefore,  in  its  own  defense,  to  regulate  the  people's  housing. 
In  small  communities,  and  especially  in  rural  communities, 
where  homes  are  more  widely  separated  and  in  some  cases 
quite  isolated,  it  has  seemed  of  little  concern  to  others  how 
one  citizen  builds  his  home  and  what  he  does  in  it.  Thought¬ 
ful  consideration  of  such  cases  as  that  described  above,  how¬ 
ever,  must  convince  us  that  what  happens  even  in  remote 
homes  is  a  matter  of  national  concern.  Both  the  physical  and 
the  economic  strength  of  the  nation  is  undermined  by  un¬ 
wholesome  conditions  in  the  separate  homes  of  the  land. 

Economic  loss  to  the  community  may  result  not  merely 
from  unwholesome  home  conditions,  but  also  from  incon¬ 
venience  of  location  and  arrangement  of  the  homes.  A  good 
deal  of  attention  is  being  given  to  “community  planning” 
in  the  United  States  and  especially  in  England  and  other 
European  countries.  Community  planning  includes  not  only 
provision  for  the  proper  location  and  construction  of  public 
buildings  and  streets,  for  water  supply,  lights,  parks,  etc.,  but 

1  Bashore,  “Overcrowding  and  Defective  Housing  in  the  Rural  Dis¬ 
tricts,”  quoted  in  Nourse,  Agricultural  Economics ,  pp.  118,  119,  121. 


68 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


also  for  the  convenient,  as  well  as  wholesome  and  pleasant, 
location  of  homes.  Large  cities,  like  London,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  and  Chicago,  have  spent  enormous  sums  of 
money  in  city  planning  after  they  have  already  grown  up 
without  plan.  It  has  necessitated  destroying  old  structures 
and  widening  streets.  Villages  and  small  towns  are  in  a 
position  to  introduce  a  plan  for  future  growth  without  this 
needless  expense.  Our  beautiful  capital  city  of  Washington 
has  grown  according  to  a  plan  that  was  carefully  laid  out 
before  a  building  was  erected.  But  even  in  Washington  one 
of  the  greatest  problems  the  city  had  to  face  during  the  war 
was  that  of  providing  homes  for  the  enormous  number  of 
workers  who  came  to  the  city  to  do  the  work  of  the  gov¬ 
ernment. 

“The  need  of  careful  arrangement  in  country  homes  is 
much  more  urgent  than  in  city  homes  for  the  reason  that 
country  people  use  their  homes  as  the  business  center  of 
their  profession/’  says  Prof.  R.  J.  Pearce,  of  Iowa  State 
College.  “The  farmer  in  his  business  center  must  not  only 
produce  enough  raw  material  to  provide  for  himself  and 
family,  but  he  must  needs  produce  enough  to  feed  and  clothe 
the  entire  human  race.”  “ Conservation  of  space  must  be 
taken  into  consideration  to  obtain  the  greatest  results  from 
our  high  priced  land;  convenience  must  be  a  prime  factor 
when  expensive  labor  is  at  a  premium;  and  attractiveness 
must  be  one  of  the  chief  motives  not  only  to  make  farm 
property  more  salable  but  to  give  greater  enjoyment  to  the 
owner  and  his  family.  ...”  “A  farmstead  is  but  a  unit 
in  a  farming  community,  yet  travelers  form  an  impression 
of  the  entire  community  by  individual  farm  homes  which 
they  see  in  passing.  Therefore,  not  only  financial  considera¬ 
tion  but  personal  pride  and  a  feeling  of  community  spirit 
and  enterprise  should  urge  the  farm  owner  to  develop  his 
farmstead  according  to  the  best  of  modern  methods.” 


WHY  GOVERNMENT  HELPS  IN  HOME-MAKING  69 


Home  ownership  is  one  of  the  strongest  influences  that 
give  permanence  and  stability  to  the  community.  The 
census  taken  by  the  United  States  government  every  ten 
years  shows  that  home  ownership  has  been  decreasing 
throughout  the  country  as  a  whole.  The  decrease  has  been 
greatest  in  the  cities,  but  it  is  true  also  of  farm-home  owner¬ 
ship.  In  1880  only  25%  of  the  farms  of  the  United  States 
were  occupied  by  tenants  (renters);  in  1910,  37%  were  so 
occupied.  It  is  true  that  in  the  ten  years  from  1900  to  1910 
there  was  a  slight  increase  in  the  proportion  of  farms  owned 
by  their  occupants  in  the  New  England  and  Middle  At¬ 
lantic  states,  and  in  a  large  part  of  the  West;  but  the  in¬ 
crease  in  these  parts  was  more  than  overbalanced  by  the 
decrease  in  the  South  Atlantic  and  Gulf  states  and  in  the 
Mississippi  valley.  The  smallest  proportion  of  farm  ten¬ 
ancy  is  found  in  New  England  (8  %),  and  the  largest  in  the 
southern  states  (45.9%  in  the  South  Atlantic  states,  and 
more  than  50%  in  the  South  Central  states).  A  large  part 
of  the  farming  in  the  South  is  done  by  Negroes,  most  of  whom 
are  either  laborers  on  the  farms  of  the  white  population  or 
tenants  on  small  farms  which  they  usually  work  on  shares. 
And  yet  the  number  of  Negro  farm  owners  in  the  South  has 
been  rapidly  increasing  in  the  last  few  years,  though  not  so 
rapidly  as  the  number  of  tenants.  In  1910  Negro  farm 
owners  cultivated  nearly  16,000,000  acres  of  land  in  the 
South,  all  of  which  they  have  acquired  since  the  Civil  War. 

The  decline  in  home  ownership  both  in  the  cities  and  in 
the  rural  districts  of  the  United  States  has  been  observed 
with  considerable  anxiety  because  of  the  effect  upon  our 
national  welfare  and  upon  the  citizenship  of  the  country. 
One  writer  says : 

Farming  is  a  permanent  business;  it  is  no  “fly  by  night”  occupa¬ 
tion.  ...  No  man  can  pull  up  stakes  and  leave  a  farm  at  the  close  of 
the  year  without  sacrificing  the  results  of  labor  which  he  has  done.  .  .  . 


70 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


The  renter  who  ends  harvest  knowing  that  he  will  move  in  the  spring, 
will  not  do  as  good  a  job  of  hauling  manure  and  fall  plowing  as  he  would 
were  he  to  stay;  nor  does  he  take  as  good  care  of  the  buildings  and  other 
improvements.  .  .  . 

The  cost  to  the  farming  business  of  the  country  each  year  for  this 
annual  farm  moving-week  mounts  into  the  millions  of  dollars.  And 
the  pity  of  it  all  is  that  practically  no  one  is  the  winner  thereby.  .  .  . 
The  renter  loses,  the  landlord  loses,  the  general  community  and  the 
nation  at  large  lose.1 

Tenant  farming  also  places  obstacles  in  the  way  of  com¬ 
munity  progress  in  other  ways. 

The  tenant  takes  little  interest  in  community  affairs.  The  questions 
of  schools,  churches,  or  roads,  are  of  little  moment  to  him.  He  does  not 
wish  to  invest  in  enterprises  which  will  of  necessity  be  left  wholly  .  .  . 
to  his  successor.  In  short,  he  is  in  the  community,  but  hardly  of  it.2 

A  family  that  owns  its  home  feels  a  sense  of  proprietorship 
in  a  part  of  the  community  land.  The  money  value  of  a 
home  increases  in  proportion  to  the  prosperity  of  the  com¬ 
munity  as  a  whole;  its  owner  will  therefore  be  inclined  to 
do  all  he  can  to  promote  the  welfare  of  a  community.  A 
community  that  is  made  up  largely  of  homes  owned  by 
their  occupants  is  likely  to  be  more  prosperous  and  more 
progressive,  and  its  citizens  more  loyal  to  it,  than  a  com¬ 
munity  whose  families  are  tenants. 

While  all  that  has  been  said  in  the  preceding  paragraph 
is  true,  it  must  not  be  thought  that  tenancy  is  necessarily 
a  bad  thing  in  all  cases,  nor  that  a  man  who  does  not  own  his 
home  can  not  be  a  thoroughly  good  citizen.  There  are 
circumstances  that  make  it  necessary  for  many  families 
to  live  in  dwellings  that  they  do  not  own.  Tenancy  may  be 

1  W.  D.  Boyce,  in  an  editorial  in  The  Farming  Business ,  February 
26,  1916,  and  quoted  in  Nourse,  Agricultural  Economics ,  p.  651. 

2  B.  H.  Hibbard,  “Farm  Tenancy  in  the  United  States,”  in  Annals 
of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science,  March,  1912, 
P-  39- 


WHY  GOVERNMENT  HELPS  IN  HOME-MAKING  71 

a  step  toward  home  ownership.  A  citizen  may  have  in¬ 
sufficient  money  to  buy  a  farm,  but  enough  to  enable  him 
to  rent  one.  By  industry,  economy,  and  intelligence,  he 
may  soon  accumulate  means  with  which  to  buy  the  farm  he 
occupies  or  some  other. 

It  is  as  much  the  duty  of  the  home  renter  as  it  is  of  the 
home  owner  to  take  an  interest  in  the  community  life  in 
which  he  and  his  family  share,  and  to  cooperate  with  his 
neighbors  for  the  common  good.  While  he  lives  in  the 
community  he  is  largely  dependent  upon  it,  like  any  other 
citizen,  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  wants.  Its  markets  and 
its  roads  are  his  for  the  transportation  and  disposal  of  his 
produce  and  stock.  He  gets  the  benefit  of  its  schools  for 
the  education  of  his  children.  He  may  share  in  its  social 
life  if  he  cares  to  do  so.  His  property  is  protected  by  the 
same  agencies  that  protect  that  of  his  neighbors.  He  can 
not,  therefore,  escape  the  responsibility  of  contributing  to 
the  progress  of  his  community  to  the  extent  of  his  ability. 

It  is  as  much  the  duty  of  the  man  who  rents  a  farm  as  it 
is  of  the  man  who  owns  one  to  make  his  farm  produce  to 
its  full  capacity,  to  protect  the  soil  from  exhaustion  and  the 
buildings  and  fences  from  destruction.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  landlord,  both  as  a  good  business 
man  and  as  a  good  citizen,  to  make  such  terms  with  his 
tenant  that  the  latter  will  take  an  interest  in  the  farm  and 
will  find  it  profitable  to  farm  properly. 

The  landlord  must  be  interested  not  only  in  his  land  but  in  his  tenant. 
The  tenant  must  be  interested  not  only  in  himself  but  in  his  landlord  and 
his  land.  A  system  that  favors  the  tenant  to  the  injury  of  the  land 
is  bad.  A  system  that  favors  the  land  to  the  injury  of  the  tenant  is 
equally  harmful.  Either  system  will  result  in  the  poverty  of  both  the 
landlord  and  the  tenant.1 

1  Dr.  Seaman  A.  Knapp,  quoted  by  Dr.  Thomas  Jesse  Jones  in 
“  Negroes  and  the  Census  of  1910,”  p.  16.  (Reprint  from  The  Southern 
Workman  for  August,  1912.) 


72 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


The  fact  remains,  however,  that  home  ownership  con¬ 
tributes  to  the  permanence,  the  stability,  and  the  progress 
of  a  community.  It  is  also  a  fact  that  conditions  have 
developed  in  our  country,  both  in  cities  and  in  rural  com¬ 
munities,  which  make  home  ownership  increasingly  difficult. 

We  should  not  leave  the  study  of  this  chapter  without 
noting  that  one  of  the  most  important  services  performed 
for  the  community  by  the  home  is  that  of  training  its  mem¬ 
bers  for  citizenship.  The  family  has  been  called  ‘‘a  school 
of  all  the  virtues”  that  go  to  make  good  citizenship.  It  is 
a  school  in  which  not  only  the  children,  but  also  the  parents, 
not  only  the  boys  and  men,  but  also  the  girls  and  women, 
receive  training  by  practice.  In  the  home  are  developed 
thoughtfulness  for  others,  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  for  the 
common  good,  loyalty  to  the  group  of  which  the  individual 
is  a  member,  respect  for  the  opinions  of  others  of  longer 
experience,  a  spirit  of  team  work,  and  obedience  to  rules 
which  exist  for  the  welfare  of  all.  If  these  and  other  qualities 
of  good  citizenship  are  not  cultivated  in  the  home,  it  is  not 
in  a  healthy  condition  nor  performing  its  proper  service  to 
the  community. 

Moreover,  the  exercise  of  these  virtues  in  the  home  is  not 
only  training  for  good  citizenship;  it  is  good  citizenship. 
If  the  home  is  as  important  a  factor  in  our  national  life  as 
this  chapter  has  indicated,  then  one  of  the  greatest  op¬ 
portunities  for  good  citizenship,  and  one  of  the  greatest 
duties  of  good  citizenship,  is  that  of  making  the  home  what 
it  should  be ;  and  in  this  each  member  of  the  family  has  his 
or  her  share. 


CHAPTER  X 


EARNING  A  LIVING 

While  young  people  are  spending  most  of  their  time  in 
school  or  at  play,  their  fathers  and  other  grown  people  are 
usually  chiefly  occupied  in  the  business  of  making  a  living 
or  '‘earning  money.”  Children  are,  as  a  rule,  wholly  de¬ 
pendent  upon  their  parents  for  their  living.  But  during 
their  period  of  dependence  they  are  gaining  skill  and  ex¬ 
perience,  in  school  and  otherwise,  that  will  later  enable 
them  to  earn  their  own  living  and  that  of  other  people  who 
may,  in  turn,  become  dependent  upon  them. 

As  adult  life  approaches,  there  comes  an  increasing  de¬ 
sire  for  independence  of  others,  to  have  possessions,  own 
property,  or  accumulate  wealth.1  Our  vocations,  or  means 
of  earning  a  livelihood,  come  to  occupy  a  prominent  place 
in  our  thought,  and  to  a  large  extent  control  our  activity. 
An  inquiry  in  a  large,  first-year  high  school  class  disclosed 
the  fact  that  the  girls  of  the  class,  quite  as  much  as  the 
boys,  were  thinking  of  their  choice  of  vocation.  More 
avenues  are  open  to  girls  to-day  than  formerly  by  which 

1  The  activities  by  which  we  earn  a  living  are  also  the  activities  by 
which  wealth  is  produced.  It  is  important  to  understand  that  when  we 
speak  of  “wealth”  we  do  not  necessarily  mean  great  wealth.  A  boy 
who  has  a  fifty- cent  knife,  or  a  girl  who  has  a  twenty-five- cent  purse, 
has  wealth  as  truly  as  the  man  who  owns  a  well-stocked  farm.  The 
difference  is  merely  in  kind  and  amount.  Food,  clothing,  houses,  books, 
tools,  cattle,  are  all  forms  of  wealth.  Any  material  thing,  for  which 
we  are  willing  to  work  and  make  sacrifices  because  it  satisfies  our  wants, 
is  wealth.  Earning  a  living  is  merely  earning  or  producing  wealth  to 
satisfy  our  wants  and  those  of  others. 


74 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


to  earn  their  living  outside  of  the  family;  but  even  the 
management  of  a  home  is  a  business  as  truly  as  the  man¬ 
agement  of  a  farm  or  a  factory,  and  is  an  exceedingly 
important  factor  in  the  earning  of  the  family  living. 

No  matter  what  varied  interests  the  people  in  our  com¬ 
munities  may  have,  the  most  conspicuous  activities  that  we 
see  going  on  are  usually  those  that  have  to  do  with  earning  a 
living  or  the  production  of  wealth.  Indeed,  some  people 
become  so  absorbed  in  the  business  of  earning  a  living  that 
they  seem  to  be  living  to  earn  rather  than  earning  to  live.  It 
does  not  do  to  forget  that  not  earning ,  but  living  is  the  real 
end  in  view.  Unless  we  know  how  to  use  what  we  earn  to 
provide  properly  for  all  of  our  normal  wants,  the  effort  we 
spend  in  earning  is  very  largely  wasted. 

Nevertheless,  before  we  can  enjoy  a  living  it  has  to  be 
earned,  by  ourselves  or  by  some  one  else;  and  the  activities 
by  which  it  is  earned  occupy  so  important  a  place  in  our  lives, 
are  so  closely  dependent  upon  the  community,  have  so  much 
to  do  with  our  citizenship,  and  receive  so  much  attention 
from  government,  that  we  must  give  them  some  consideration. 

Our  dependence  upon  others  for  a  living  by  no  means  ends 
with  childhood.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  entirely  “self- 
made  man,”  by  which  is  meant  a  man  who  has  been  success¬ 
ful  entirely  by  his  own  efforts.  It  is  true  that  the  primitive 
hunter  and  the  pioneer  farmer  were  independent  of  others 
to  an  unusual  extent  (see  pages  7-8).  They  extracted  their 
living  directly  from  nature  with  little  help  from  others. 
But  their  living  was  a  meager  one,  and  they  could  not  ac¬ 
cumulate  much  wealth.  The  very  land  that  a  pioneer 
occupies,  even  though  it  is  extensive  and  fertile,  has  little 
value  as  long  as  it  is  remote  from  centers  of  population. 

Even  if  a  pioneer  laid  claim  to  a  large  tract  of  land,  he 
could  produce  little  wealth  from  it  in  crops  if  he  could  get 
no  help  to  cultivate  it,  or  if  he  had  no  improved  machinery 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


75 


(made  by  others);  and  whatever  he  produced,  he  and  his 
family  could  eat  but  little  of  the  product.  He  could  feed 
some  to  his  few  animals,  and  he  would  save  some  for  seed; 
but  anything  that  he  raised  above  what  he  could  actually 
use  would  have  no  value  unless  he  could  get  it  to  other 
people  who  wanted  it.  If  he  could  not  sell  what  he  produced, 
neither  could  he  buy  from  others  what  they  produced  to 
satisfy  other  wants  than  that  for  food.  So  the  kind  of  living 
a  person  enjoys,  and  the  amount  of  wealth  he  accumulates, 
depend  largely  upon  other  people,  and  upon  the  community 
in  which  he  lives. 

Under  present-day  conditions,  a  farmer  who  raises  wheat 
probably  uses  none  of  it  himself.  He  sells  his  entire  crop 
for  the  use  of  others,  while  to  supply  himself  and  his  family 
with  bread  he  goes  to  the  store  and  buys  flour  that  may  have 
been  milled  in  Minnesota  from  wheat  raised  by  other  farmers, 
perhaps  in  North  or  South  Dakota.  In  exchange  for  his 
wheat  he  also  gets  clothing  manufactured  in  New  York  or 
New  England  from  cotton  raised  in  Georgia  or  Texas,  or 
from  wool  grown  in  Montana.  He  buys  a  wagon  made  in 
Indiana  from  lumber  cut  in  the  South  and  iron  mined  in 
Minnesota  and  smelted  in  Ohio.  Thus  he  earns  his  living 
by  producing  food  for  other  people,  while  the  things  he  uses 
in  living  are  the  product  of  labor  expended  by  other  people 
in  the  effort  to  earn  their  living.  We  noticed  in  Chapter  II 
how  many  people  and  occupations  were  concerned  in  pro¬ 
ducing  a  pair  of  shoes  (page  io). 

This  again  emphasizes  our  interdependence  in  community 
life.  But  what  we  now  want  to  notice  particularly  is  that 
while  the  farmer  or  other  worker  may  be  interested  pri¬ 
marily  in  providing  for  his  own  wants  and  those  of  his  family 
he  can  do  this  only  by  producing  something  or  performing 
service  for  others ;  and  that  while  each  worker  may  be  most 
concerned  about  what  he  receives  for  his  work,  the  community 


76  TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 

is  most  concerned  about  what  he  produces.  Earning  a  living 
has  two  sides  to  it,  rendering  service  to  others  and  being 
paid  for  the  service  rendered.  It  is  as  if  the .  community 
entered  into  a  sort  of  agreement  with  him  to  the  effect  that 
it  will  provide  him  with  a  living  in  return  for  definite  service 
to  the  community,  or  for  the  product  of  his  labor.  What  we 
call  “ business”  is  selling  a  service.  It  may  be  personal 
service,  such  as  teaching,  or  prescribing  medicine,  or  nursing, 
or  giving  legal  advice,  or  cutting  hair,  or  driving  a  team,  or 
running  an  automobile.  Or  it  may  be  merchandising  — 
purchasing,  transporting,  storing,  retailing,  and  delivering 
things  which  have  been  produced  perhaps  many  hundreds 
or  thousands  of  miles  away.  Or  it  may  be  raising  foodstuffs 
on  the  farm,  or  mining  fuel  and  metals  from  the  earth,  or 
cutting  timber  from  the  forest.  Or  it  may  be  manufacturing 
—  buying  materials  and  labor  and  converting  them  into 
serviceable  products.  Every  man's  business  is  also  the  com¬ 
munity's  business.  The  community  has  a  right  to  expect  in¬ 
dustry  and  honest,  efficient  work  from  every  worker.  Good 
or  bad  citizenship  shows  itself  in  the  work  that  a  citizen 
does  for  a  living  more,  perhaps,  than  in  any  other  way. 

There  are  exceptional  cases  where  people  receive  a  living 
without  earning  it.  One  class  of  such  people  is  represented 
by  thieves,  gamblers,  swindlers,  and  persons  engaged  in 
occupations  that  are  positively  harmful  to  the  community. 
Such  people  may  be  very  skillful,  and  they  may  work  hard 
enough,  but  they  take  what  others  have  earned  without 
producing  anything  of  value  to  the  community. 

Then  there  are  those  who  are  incapable  of  productive 
work  because  of  physical  defects,  or  through  the  feebleness 
of  old  age.  It  is  the  duty  of  every  citizen  to  provide,  as 
far  as  possible,  during  his  productive  years,  for  the  '‘rainy 
day"  of  misfortune  or  advancing  age;  but  for  those  who 
can  not  do  so,  the  community  must  provide. 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


77 


Very  young  children  are  users  of  wealth  produced  by 
others,  while  they  produce  nothing  for  the  use  of  others. 
It  is  expected,  however,  that  children  will  in  later  years 
make  return  to  the  community  for  what  they  have  received 
from  their  parents  and  from  the  community  as  a  whole 
during  their  period  of  helplessness. 

Some  people  inherit  wealth,  or  otherwise  come  into 
possession  of  it  without  effort  on  their  part.  The  wealth 
so  received,  however,  has  been  earned  by  some  one,  or  has 
come  from  the  community  in  some  way.  If  the  person  who 
so  receives  it  uses  it  in  a  way  that  is  highly  useful  to  the 
community,  he  may  in  a  sense  earn  it  even  after  he  receives 
it;  but  if  he  uses  it  solely  for  his  own  enjoyment,  without 
effort  to  make  it  highly  useful  to  the  community,  he  does 
not  in  any  sense  earn  it,  and  places  himself  in  the  class  of 
those  who  are  wholly  dependent  upon  the  community. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  people  who  do  not  get  for 
their  work  a  living  that  fairly  compensates  them  for  the 
service  they  render  by  it  to  the  community.  This  is  one 
of  the  particulars  in  which  our  community  life  is  still  very 
imperfect.  Where  so  many  different  kinds  of  workers  are 
engaged  in  producing  shoes,  for  example,  it  is  extremely 
difficult  to  determine  how  much  each  should  be  paid  for 
his  share  of  the  work.  What  wages  should  be  given  to  the 
different  classes  of  workers  who  care  for  the  cattle,  make 
the  leather,  manufacture  the  machines  with  which  the  shoes 
are  made,  operate  the  machines,  mine  the  coal  and  iron  for 
the  production  of  the  machines,  and  so  on?  What  profits 
shall  be  allowed  to  the  men  who  raise  the  cattle,  to  the 
tanners  of  the  leather,  to  the  merchants  who  sell  the  shoes 
and  the  machines,  and  to  the  transportation  companies 
that  carry  them  from  the  factories  to  the  dealers?  What 
interest  shall  be  received  by  the  men  who  furnish  the  capital 
necessary  to  run  the  factories  and  the  farms?  These  ques- 


78 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


tions  relating  to  the  distribution  of  wealth  1  that  men  pro¬ 
duce  have  proved  very  difficult  to  answer  satisfactorily. 
While  some  doubtless  receive  too  much  in  proportion  to 
their  service  to  the  community,  others  as  truly  receive  too 
little. 

If  our  community  life  were  perfectly  adjusted  in  all  its 
parts;  if  all  the  people  clearly  recognized  their  common 
interests  and  their  interdependence;  if  they  had  the  spirit 
of  cooperation  and  were  wise  enough  to  devise  smoothly 
working  machinery  of  cooperation  —  then  the  returns  that 
a  worker  received  for  his  work  would  be  closely  proportion¬ 
ate  to  the  service  rendered  by  his  work.  That  is,  he  would 
get  what  he  earned ,  so  far  as  wages  or  profits  were  concerned. 
But  if,  under  the  existing  imperfect  conditions  of  com¬ 
munity  life,  some  seem  to  get  more,  and  others  less,  than 
their  service  warrants,  the  remedy  is  not  for  the  wronged 
worker  or  producer  to  become  a  “ slacker’ ’  in  his  work, 
but  rather  to  show  by  his  industry  and  efficiency  that  he  is 
worthy  of  the  community’s  recognition.  For  if  he  tries  to 
“get  even”  by  withholding  from  the  community  the  service 
it  has  a  right  to  expect  from  him,  he  only  makes  matters 
worse,  for  himself  as  well  as  for  the  community,  because  he 
helps  in  that  way  to  keep  the  community  in  an  unhealthy 
condition.  An  injury  suffered  from  an  imperfect  com¬ 
munity  can  not  be  cured  by  doing  an  injury  to  the  commu¬ 
nity,  but  only  by  doing  everything  possible  to  make  the 

1  A  very  useful  and  interesting,  but  rather  difficult,  science  has  grown 
up  to  explain  the  production ,  distribution ,  and  use  of  wealth .  It  is  called 
the  science  of  economics.  Of  all  the  divisions  of  this  science,  that  relating 
to  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  the  most  perplexing.  It  is  the  inequalities 
in  the  distribution  of  wealth,  the  sense  of  injustice  produced  by  these 
inequalities,  and  sometimes  a  failure  to  understand  what  a  fair  distribu¬ 
tion  is,  that  have  caused  all  of  the  labor  disputes  referred  to  in  Chapter 
VII,  and  the  discontent  sometimes  felt  by  farmers  and  other  producers 
in  regard  to  the  prices  of  their  products. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  79 

community  strong  and  wholesome.  (Compare  the  discus¬ 
sion  of  “membership”  in  Chapter  V,  pages  32-33.) 

The  government  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  activi¬ 
ties  by  which  people  earn  their  living.  The  reason  for  this 
may  be  clearly  seen.  Each  citizen  has  a  right  to  feel  that 
the  government  is  interested  in  his  individual  prosperity 
and  happiness;  and  it  is,  for  unhappy  and  discontented 
citizens  are  seldom  good  citizens.  But  the  government 
represents  the  community  as  a  whole,  and  it  is  supposed  to 
have  the  interest  of  the  community  as  a  whole  in  its  keep¬ 
ing  rather  than  the  interest  of  particular  individuals.  Its 
interest  is  primarily  in  what  each  citizen  produces ,  for  it 
is  upon  this  that  the  strength  of  the  nation,  and  of  the 
smaller  communities  of  which  the  nation  consists,  depends. 

A  few  days  after  war  was  declared  against  Germany,  the 
President  made  an  appeal  to  his  fellow-countrymen  in 
which  he  said: 

It  is  evident  to  every  thinking  man  that  our  industries,  on  the  farms, 
in  the  shipyards,  in  the  mines,  in  the  factories,  must  be  made  more 
prolific  and  more  efficient  than  ever  and  that  they  must  be  more  economi¬ 
cally  managed  and  better  adapted  to  the  particular  requirements  of 
our  task  than  they  have  been;  and  what  I  want  to  say  is  that  the  men 
and  women  who  devote  their  thought  and  their  energy  to  these  things 
will  be  serving  the  country  and  conducting  the  fight  for  peace  and  free¬ 
dom  just  as  truly  and  just  as  effectively  as  the  men  on  the  battlefield 
or  in  the  trenches.  The  industrial  forces  of  the  country,  men  and 
women  alike,  will  be  a  great  national,  a  great  international,  Service 
Army,  —  a  notable  and  honored  host  engaged  in  the  service  of  the 
nation  and  the  world.  .  .  .  Thousands,  nay,  hundreds  of  thousands,  of 
men  otherwise  liable  to  military  service  will  of  right  and  necessity  be 
excused  from  that  service  and  assigned  to  the  fundamental,  sustaining 
work  of  the  fields  and  factories  and  mines,  and  they  will  be  as  much 
part  of  the  great  patriotic  forces  of  the  nation  as  the  men  under  fire. 

He  then  appealed  directly  to  every  kind  of  worker  in  the 
country,  and  to  the  farmers  he  said: 


8o 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


The  supreme  need  of  our  own  nation  and  of  the  nations  with  which 
we  are  cooperating  is  an  abundance  of  supplies,  and  especially  of  food¬ 
stuffs.  .  .  .  Without  abundant  food  .  .  .  the  whole  great  enterprise 
upon  which  we  have  embarked  will  break  down  and  fail.  .  .  .  Upon 
the  farmers  of  this  country,  therefore,  in  large  measure,  rests  the  fate 
of  the  war  and  the  fate  of  the  nations.  .  .  Let  me  suggest,  also,  that 
every  one  who  creates  or  cultivates  a  garden  helps,  and  helps  greatly,  to 
solve  the  problem  of  the  feeding  of  the  nations;  and  that  every  house¬ 
wife  who  practices  strict  economy  puts  herself  in  the  ranks  of  those  who 
serve  the  nation. 

And  then  he  added: 

The  government  of  the  United  States  and  the  governments  of  the 
several  states  stand  ready  to  cooperate.  .  .  .  This  is  our  opportunity 
to  demonstrate  the  efficiency  of  a  great  democracy  and  we  shall  not  fall 
short  of  it. 

The  importance  of  industry  as  an  element  of  our  national 
strength  is  by  no  means  limited  to  wartime.  The  history  of 
our  country  has  been  largely  a  story  of  the  clearing  of 
forests,  of  the  reclaiming  of  the  soil  for  agriculture,  of  the 
opening  of  mines,  and  of  the  growth  of  commerce  and 
manufacture.  It  has  been  a  story  of  the  building  of  rail¬ 
roads  and  steamships,  of  telegraphs  and  telephones.  The 
men  who  have  done  these  things  are  as  truly  the  builders 
of  our  nation  as  the  men  who  made  our  constitutions  and 
organized  our  governments.  The  people  who,  in  times  of 
peace  as  well  as  in  times  of  war,  work  on  the  farms  or  in 
the  mines,  in  factories  and  shops,  in  stores  and  offices,  or 
in  other  businesses  and  occupations,  are  as  truly  doing 
their  country  a  service  as  those  who  make  our  laws  and 
administer  our  government. 

The  nation  needs  the  productive  work  of  each  citizen  in 
time  of  peace  as  truly  as  in  time  of  war,  although  when  it 
is  not  fighting  for  its  very  life  it  is  more  tolerant  of  those 
who  do  not  contribute  effectually  by  their  work  to  the 
common  good.  It  carries  them  along  somehow.  But  such 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


81 


members  of  the  community  are  a  burden  and  a  source  of 
weakness  at  all  times.  Therefore,  for  example,  there  are 
in  most  of  our  communities  laws  against  vagrancy;  that 
is,  against  willful  and  habitual  idleness  as  in  the  case  of 
beggars  and  tramps.  The  community  is  always  suspicious 
of  persons  “without  visible  means  of  support.”  There  are 
usually  many  men  “out  of  work”  in  different  parts  of  our 
country.  In  times  of  business  depression  the  number  may 
become  very  great,  while  in  prosperous  times  the  number 
dwindles;  but  always  there  are  some.  It  is  often  through 
no  fault  of  their  own;  it  is  another  result  of  the  imperfect 
adjustment  of  our  community  life.  It  often  happens  that 
while  large  numbers  of  men  are  unable  to  find  work  in 
industrial  centers,  the  farmers  in  many  parts  of  the  country 
may  be  suffering  for  want  of  help.  This  may  be  merely 
because  there  is  no  way  by  which  to  let  workmen  know 
where  they  are  needed,  or  of  distributing  them  to  meet  the 
need.  Or,  many  of  the  unemployed  may  be  unskilled,  while 
the  demand  is  for  skilled  workmen;  or  they  may  be  skilled 
in  one  line,  while  the  demand  is  in  another  line.  Whatever 
the  causes,  the  “problem  of  the  unemployed”  is  one  of  the 
most  serious  that  the  community  has  to  deal  with.  During 
the  war  the  national  government  sought  to  overcome  these 
difficulties  by  the  organization  of  an  employment  division 
in  the  Department  of  Labor. 

It  is  of  the  greatest  importance  both  to  the  individual 
and  to  the  community  that  every  citizen  (i)  should  be 
continuously  employed  in  a  useful  occupation,  (2)  should 
be  free  to  choose  that  occupation  for  which  he  is  best  fitted 
and  in  which  he  will  be  happiest,  .and  (3)  should  be  thor¬ 
oughly  efficient  in  his  work,  whatever  it  is. 

(1)  The  community  has  a  right  to  expect  every  citizen 
to  be  industrious  and  productive,  for  only  in  this  way  can 
he  be  self-sustaining  and  at  the  same  time  contribute  his 


82 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


share  to  the  well-being  of  the  community.  Probably  all 
who  read  this  chapter  are  desirous  of  doing  useful  work. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  easy  for  any  of  us  to  fall  into  the 
habit  of  thinking  more  about  what  we  can  get  than  about 
what  we  can  give.  There  are  people  who  seek  habitually 
to  do  as  little  as  possible  for  what  they  get,  or  to  get  all 
they  can  for  the  least  possible  service.  This  applies  not 
only  to  idlers  who  live  entirely  off  the  community  without 
any  service  on  their  part,  but  also  to  those  who  have  em¬ 
ployment,  but  who  seek  to  evade,  by  time-serving  and 
otherwise  “ slacking,”  the  full  responsibility  of  service.  We 
sometimes  hear  complaint  in  regard  to  public  officials  who 
draw  good  salaries  without  rendering  adequate  or  honest 
public  service  in  return,  and  to  such  we  frequently  apply 
the  term  “grafter.”  But  the  principle  is  exactly  the  same 
when  any  person  who  has  undertaken  to  do  a  piece  of  work 
fritters  away  his  time  or  “loafs  on  the  job.” 

The  citizen  owes  it  to  his  community,  and  to  himself  as 
well,  to  think  constantly  of  his  work  in  terms  of  service 
rendered.  After  all,  the  chief  return  that  we  get  for  our 
work  is  not  the  wages  or  the  profits,  important  as  they  are 
to  us,  but  the  satisfaction  of  doing  something  that  is  worth 
while.  If  this  pleasure  is  absent  from  the  work  we  do,  no 
amount  of  money  returns  can  compensate  us  for  it.  The 
happy  man  is  a  busy  man,  an  industrious  man;  and  his 
happiness  is  more  in  the  doing,  than  in  the  mere  fact  of 
money  returns. 

(2)  The  value  of  our  work  to  the  community  and  the 
pleasure  that  we  derive  from  it  both  depend  to  a  large 
extent  upon  our  fitness  for  it.  It  is  important  to  choose  our 
work  carefully.  There  are  four  important  considerations 
in  choosing  a  vocation:  (a)  its  usefulness  to  the  commu¬ 
nity,  (6)  one’s  own  fitness  for  it,  (c)  one’s  happiness  in  it, 
and  (d)  whether  it  offers  an  adequate  living  to  one’s  self 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


83 


and  dependents.  The  last  of  these  is,  of  course,  a  most 
important  consideration.  What  a  person  receives  for  his 
work  ought  to  be  determined  by  the  first  two  considerations, 
i.e.,  the  usefulness  of  the  work  to  the  community  and  one’s 
fitness  for  it.  We  have  seen  that  this  is  not  always  true. 
In  such  cases  it  often  becomes  necessary  to  make  a  further 
choice  —  a  choice  between  working  primarily  for  one’s  own 
profit  and  working  primarily  for  the  satisfaction  that  comes 
from  important  service  well  rendered.  It  is  not  always 
easy  to  make  this  choice;  but  there  are  many  people  who 
have  sacrificed  large  incomes  for  the  sake  of  doing  work 
that  the  community  needs  and  for  which  they  consider 
themselves  well  fitted. 

The  opportunity  to  choose  one’s  calling,  to  decide  what 
service  one  will  fit  himself  for,  the  right  of  “self-determina¬ 
tion”  in  regard  to  what  one’s  work  shall  be  —  this  is  the 
thing  for  which  men  have  left  Old  World  conditions  and 
come  to  America  more  often  than  for  anything  else.  This 
is  what  freedom  means.  If  a  person  can  do  what  he  likes 
to  do  best,  he  gets  pleasure  out  of  his  work.  To  fit  himself 
for  this  work,  he  is  willing  to  spend  years  in  preparation, 
until  he  is  able  to  offer  a  service  of  the  kind  he  likes  to 
render,  and  for  which  others  are  glad  to  pay  well.  This  is 
why  men  are  happier  when  they  are  free.  They  enjoy 
their  work  for  its  own  sake;  they  enjoy  the  “living”  which 
they  have  “earned.”  But  the  ability  to  make  a  living  under 
conditions  of  freedom  depends  on  the  common  wants  or 
needs  of  the  community  and  its  willingness  to  pay  for  the 
satisfaction  of  these  wants  enough  to  enable  those  who 
render  the  service  also  to  satisfy  theirs.  The  “equality” 
and  “justice”  that  all  men  want  mean  equality  of  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  choose  that  which  they  like  to  do  and  an  equal 
chance  to  obtain  compensation  or  to  make  a  living  in  return 
for  their  labor  or  enterprise. 


84 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


Many  people  seem  to  have  little  choice  in  the  matter  of 
vocation.  The  farmer’s  boy  has  to  work  on  the  farm  whether 
he  wants  to  or  not ;  and  many  a  man  is  a  farmer  apparently 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  he  was  raised  on  the  farm  and 
has  seen  no  opportunity  to  do  anything  else.  Other  people 
seem  to  be  forced  into  other  occupations  by  circumstances, 
or  drift  into  them  by  chance.  But  even  in  these  cases  there 
is  something  of  a  choice.  The  farmer’s  boy  “ chooses”  to 
remain  on  the  farm  rather  than  to  take  the  chances  involved 
in  running  away,  or  because  he  would  rather  be  at  home 
than  in  a  strange  city.  The  discontented  farmer  might 
have  chosen  to  be  a  lawyer  if  he  had  been  willing  to  make 
enough  sacrifices  to  get  ready  for  it;  and  even  now  he 
'‘chooses”  to  remain  on  the  farm  in  spite  of  his  dislike  for 
it  because  to  do  otherwise  would  mean  sacrifice  of  some 
kind  or  other  that  he  is  unwilling  to  make. 

The  pleasure  and  effectiveness  of  any  work,  however, 
are  increased  if  its  importance  to  the  community  or  to  the 
world  is  clearly  understood;  for  all  productive  work  is  im¬ 
portant.  There  is  no  more  terrible  work  than  that  of  the 
soldier  in  the  trenches.  No  man  would  voluntarily  choose 
it  for  his  own  pleasure.  But  millions  of  men  have  gone  into 
it  joyfully  because  of  the  results  to  be  attained  for  their 
country  and  for  the  world.  Other  millions  of  men  and 
women,  and  even  children,  on  the  farms,  in  the  mines,  in 
the  shops,  and  in  the  homes,  worked  and  sacrificed  during 
the  war  with  Germany  as  they  had  never  worked  and  sacri¬ 
ficed  before,  produced  results  such  as  had  never  been  pro¬ 
duced  before,  and  doubtless  experienced  a  satisfaction  in 
their  toil  that  they  had  never  experienced  before,  because 
each  one  saw  more  definitely  than  before  the  relation  of  his 
work  to  the  great  national  and  world  purpose.  An  under¬ 
standing  of  the  meaning  of  our  work  in  its  relation  to  com- 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


85 


munity  welfare  goes  a  long  way  toward  “transmuting  days 
of  dreary  work  into  happier  lives.,, 

We  are  living,  however,  in  a  day  of  specialists.  The  jack- 
of-all-trades  no  longer  thrives.  The  very  nature  of  our 
interdependent  life  makes  it  necessary  for  each  worker  to 
do  one  thing  and  to  do  it  exceedingly  well.  Even  farming 
has  been  broken  up  to  a  considerable  extent  into  special 
kinds  of  farming.  Moreover,  since  the  worker  must  be  a 
specialist,  requiring  long,  special  training,  it  is  more  diffi¬ 
cult  than  it  used  to  be  for  him  to  change  from  one  occupa¬ 
tion  to  another  after  he  has  once  started.  Each  individual, 
therefore,  owes  it  both  to  the  community  and  to  himself 
to  choose  his  vocation  carefully,  so  far  as  he  has  opportunity 
to  make  a  choice.  The  schools  are  more  and  more  making 
it  their  business  to  give  to  boys  and  girls  the  knowledge 
and  the  experience  which  will  enable  them  to  choose  wisely 
their  mode  of  earning  a  living. 

(3)  Whether  a  citizen  follows  a  vocation  of  his  own  volun¬ 
tary  choice,  or  one  into  which  he  has  fallen  by  chance  or 
by  the  force  of  circumstances,  he  is  under  obligation  to 
the  community  as  well  as  to  himself  to  do  his  work  well. 
In  these  days  of  specialization  this  inevitably  means  prepa¬ 
ration ,  training.  In  this  matter  the  community  is  under 
obligation  to  the  individual;  for  if  it  expects  him  to  per¬ 
form  efficient  service,  it  must  afford  him  a  fair  opportunity 
for  preparation.  During  the  war  the  government  had  to 
take  special  measures  to  provide  training,  not  only  for 
service  in  the  army,  but  also  for  the  industrial  occupations 
that  the  nation  needed.  Vocational  training  is  receiving 
much  more  attention  than  it  used  to  receive,  both  in  city 
and  rural  schools. 

But,  as  in  the  choice  of  a  vocation,  the  individual  and 
the  family  have  large  responsibility  for  preparation  for 
vocational  life.  There  is  always  the  natural  temptation 


86 


TEAM  WORK  THROUGH  GOVERNMENT 


for  young  people  to  get  out  into  the  active  work  of  the  world 
at  the  earliest  possible  moment.  The  desire  to  be  inde¬ 
pendent,  to  earn  one’s  own  living,  to  '‘make  money,”  is 
strong.  It  leads  many  boys  and  girls  to  leave  school  even 
before  they  have  finished  their  elementary  education.  In 
the  great  majority  of  cases  this  results  in  serious  economic 
loss  both  to  the  boy  or  girl  and  to  the  community. 

We  call  it  patriotism  when  a  man  gives  all  that  he  has, 
even  his  life  if  necessary,  for  the  good  of  his  country,  without 
stopping  to  consider  whether  he  will  receive  an  equal  bene¬ 
fit  in  return.  There  is  no  higher  type  of  patriotism  than 
that  which  prompts  a  citizen  to  perform  his  best  service 
for  the  community  in  his  daily  calling,  not  for  what  he  can 
get  for  it,  but  for  what  he  can  give.  This  patriotism  is 
shared  by  the  young  citizen  who  is  willing  to  defer  an 
apparent  immediate  gain  to  himself  in  order  to  prepare 
himself  thoroughly  for  more  effective  service  later. 


